A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury takes place in the future. Humans have developed time travel machines, and one incorporation allows people to travel back in time to kill dinosaurs. The people in the company have loads of safety measures so there would be a low chance of someone changing the future. However, one man, Eckles, does what they fear: He changes the future.
Eckles and his tour group go to shoot a T-rex. Its size was miscalculated though, and it was much larger than expected. Eckles freezes up and can’t move. He also whispers, which makes the dinosaur notice them. He runs off the path specifically designed so that no organisms were harmed. He smushes a butterfly under his boot and that causes a chain reaction. The current president, Keith, is nice and kind. After the butterfly is killed, the other candidate, Deutscher, who was a dictator and hated many people became the president.
One symbol in the short story is thunder. When the dinosaur comes towards the tour group, it came with flashing thunder. When Eckles was shot for changing the future, he heard a sound of thunder. In the story, thunder symbolizes death and danger.
The author does a good job using the symbol of thunder to foreshadow what was going to happen. If maybe humans never made a time machine, these dangerous events would have never happened. Our accomplishments, even if they seem great, can cause something horrible in the future.