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What Is The Butterfly Effect In A Sound Of Thunder

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Butterfly Effect It is important to always consider the outcome of even the littlest decisions in life. This is made very apparent in “A Sound of Thunder ''by Ray Bradbury. In “A Sound of Thunder,” it is A.D. 2055 and time travel has become possible by TIME SAFARI, INC.. The main character, Eckels, pays for this adventure because he wants to shoot a tyrannosaurus rex. However, rather than shooting the t-rex, Eckels backs out and falls off the path on his way back to the time machine. When Eckels fell off the path he stepped on a butterfly, this caused the future he lived in to change forever. The story demonstrates the absolute importance of how even seemingly insignificant actions and decisions can have a major impact on the future. In …show more content…

If you change even the smallest organism you could destroy all of its future family and could possibly affect the number of predators that eat the organism. This is mentioned in the story by Travis the time safari guide. Travis states, “‘So the caveman starves. And the caveman, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is an entire future nation. From his loins would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization’” (3). This quote shows how even the smallest organisms in a system can ruin the future of some of the apex predators. If Eckels had stepped and killed even a mouse, he would have destroyed a whole future civilization. Showing even further how the future is greatly reliant on what happens in the past. Travis explained that if Eckels had killed a mouse, he could ruin an entire civilization which would directly affect the time that they are from. Lasty, at the end of the story, we are given some insight on how Eckels had altered his time by stepping on a butterfly. When Eckels stepped off of the path, he accidentally stepped on and killed a butterfly, changing the future in result due to the butterfly effect. The most apparent point in the story where the reader can see how Eckels changed his time is when, The text states, “The man behind the desk laughed. ‘You Joking? You know very well.

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