A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury: The Impacts of Careless Time Travel

This story tells us about the human impact of time travel is that if humans are careless and reckless during time travel, there could be major bad impact on time. This story is about a hunter named Eckels who pays $10,00 to travel sixty million two thousands and fifty years back in time with time safaris to hunt a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Time safaris who are Mr. Travis; he is the leader of the safari, Lesperance; who’s his assistance, and two hunters; Billings and Kramer. Eckel is told by Travis to not step off his path in the past, if he was to, it would have made changes to the timeline; the history and the present can be changed but in a bad way, nothing can ever be the same.

During his hunt, he stepped off his path because he was terrified by the Tyrannosaurus Rex, he had accidently killed a butterfly. Travis was angry about that because he was not supposed to step off his path. When they travel to the present time, they notice there were major bad changes to the timeline, it pissed off Travis. He knew it was Eckels fault so he killed him at the end of the story. Humans can be careless during time travel because humans think they have the ability to do anything and it would not come to any consequences, for example; when they are in the past and are on the land of the past, they are leaving their footprints, destroying leaves or possibly insects which are living things; this can have a bad effect in the present, there might not be trees or leaves or possibly the insects that the humans killed in the past no longer exists in the present.

This can have a big impact on the nature and possibly other humans lives in any time. During time travel humans attempt to be reckless because sometimes in bad situation like how Eckels was when he was hunting a Tyrannosaurs Rex, humans can have a situation when they are in panic so they will accidently leave something on the ground of the past and that alters the history and the present. Also humans can be reckless during time travel, in this story Travis states that “Step on a mouse and leave your print, like a grand canyon, across eternity. Queen Elizabeth might never be born, Washington might not across the Delaware, there might never be a United States at all” (Bradbury page #4) this would be an example given if someone were to be reckless, they will accidently kill a mouse and not care about and when they found it, its consequences on time, then humans will feel sorry about it. Therefore my reasons states, this story tells us that human impact on time travel that if humans are careless and reckless during time travels, for that reason there could be bad impact on timeline; the history and the present.

References

1. Bradbury, R. (1952). A Sound of Thunder. Collier's Weekly, 130(12), 25-27.
2. Eshleman, A. (2019). The Ethics of Time Travel. The Monist, 102(4), 452-468.
3. Greene, B. (2004). The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. Knopf.
4. Hawking, S. (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books.
5. Levine, R. (2010). Time Travel and Time Machines. Springer.