Reading Journal: A Sound of Thunder

 A Sound of Thunder, By Ray Bradbury (1952)

Rating: 6.5

In the first reading, it was hard to understand what is the story actually about. But, in the second reading, I can figure out what is the author wants to say. The interesting thing about this short story is that there is no exact hero, which is normally estimated as the person who saves the world. In this story, the main character Eckles looks like a hero but he cannot be qualified as a hero. Because he refuses to fight with the T-rex of his fear. I was surprised that at the end of the story, Eckles was punished as killing for his mistake. A Sound of Thunder used a time-traveling tool to experience the past. By the butterfly effect, which is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system, Eckels argues a fascination with mortality and the possibility of its reversal. The butterfly effect is the core point of this story, the character changed his value to the mass's opinion. This story was not my type so I gave a low rating, but it was interesting to see the many different themes in one story, and also this type of hero, Eckles, broke my stereotype of what a hero is.