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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Consequences of Unrestrained Profit-Seeking
The unrestrained quest for profit, along with the consequences of its pursuit, emerges as one of the story’s many themes. Time Safari, Inc., the story’s time-traveling corporation, does not use time travel for some imaginable higher good, but instead uses it for the business of entertainment and ultimately profit.
This business model, bound to an awareness that a change in the past might change the present, is dangerous, although the company tries to mitigate the risks. They justify what they are doing by claiming that only animals that would have died naturally within two minutes of the hunt will be killed and by establishing precautions meant to keep the business running. This, naturally, ignores other ethical concerns and downplays the likelihood of accidents, which they know will occur: a total of eighteen hunters and guides already have died in the previous year.
Their unrestrained quest for profit also drives the company to corruption, as Travis admits, since they “have to pay big graft to keep our franchise.” They may pay huge sums for insurance and may have agreed to the possibility of government fines, but they nevertheless put the world at risk, exploiting nature and the foolishness of people for the sake of profit. The story is as much a critique of a profit-driven, corrupt society as it is about individual actions and consequences.
Personal and Ethical Responsibility
Bradbury’s narrative highlights the need for individuals to accept and maintain personal and ethical responsibility for their behaviors, especially where risk to others is involved. Eckels, for example, struggles to accept his own ethical responsibilities, failing to focus his attention on the collective good. He is unwilling to accept his own limits, recognize his own incompetencies, and adopt and follow rules designed to protect the group. Travis, who contrasts with Eckels in many ways, is also guilty of ethical failure. Although he is conscious of the company’s corruption, he remains allied to it, thinking first of the damage to its bottom line, not of how history may have changed. He is unwilling to accept personal responsibility for his own role in supporting a dangerous and exploitative enterprise, one certainly doomed to create a disaster one day. Travis may follow a set of rules, but he is less concerned with the ethical questions underlying what he is doing than with the company’s bottom line.
In the end, the failure of only two characters to take personal and ethical responsibility leads to a world in which the company survives, although its name may now be “Tyme Sefari Inc.,” the apparent murder of the story’s protagonist, and the end of democracy in the United States.
Actions and Consequences
“A Sound of Thunder,” as it explores a science fiction trope about the dangers of visiting the past, focuses on human actions and their results, suggesting that every action should be considered relative to its consequences.
At the beginning of the hunters’ journey, Travis explains in great detail the possible consequences of any deviation from the set path and rules. His description, from mouse to fox to caveman to George Washington, foreshadows the events that unfold at the story’s conclusion, where the disastrous consequences of apparently minor acts are revealed.
Eckels begins his journey as an enthusiastic participant, unaware of the consequences that will result from what he will do. He takes the rules lightly, even seeming to question their use and necessity, and then continues his relatively carefree attitude until he faces the Tyrannosaurus he has come to hunt. There, confronted with the seriousness of the situation, he thoughtlessly breaks a fundamental rule. It is only later, upon realization that he has killed a butterfly, that he begins to comprehend the magnitude of his actions. Eckels has profoundly changed history. Regardless of how remorseful he may be, he has dramatically altered history and can do nothing to remedy the result.
