“It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time.” This quote from the short story A Sound of Thunder written by Ray Bradbury, shows how smalls thing can affect the world as we know it. The main character, Eckels, is so focused on his fear, he does not think about anything else, therefore starting a butterfly effect. He goes out hunting dinosaurs by time travel, while there, he is frightened of the dinosaur, and runs back to the time machine. In his journey back, he is careless and steps on a small butterfly, which creates a sequence of events that changes the world forever. Because Eckels is agitated, oblivious, and ignorant, he does change his life …show more content…
Toward the beginning of the story Eckels thinks he knows everything about hunting, but when they travel back in time, he proves to be just as experienced as a little kid. “Eckels, balanced on the narrow Path, aimed his rifle playfully” (Bradbury). This passage from the text shows that Eckels really wasn’t taking it all too seriously. He thought it would be just like any other kind of hunting that he’d done. This goes to show that he thought it was some kind of game, not a delicate balance that could be tipped within seconds. He shows this quality many other times during the story. "But if you come back this morning in Time," said Eckels eagerly, “you must've bumped into us, our Safari! How did it turn out? Was it successful? Did all of us get through­ alive?" “Travis and Lesperance gave each other a look” (Bradbury). In just this small part of the story Eckels substantiates the fact that he does not have nearly enough understanding of how the whole process of time travel and hunting dinosaurs goes. From the beginning to the end of the story, Eckels displays this characteristic of