Structure
On this page we will look at the structure of the short story "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury.
Point of view and narrator
The short story is a third-person narration, where the narrator adopts the perspective of Eckels, the main character. The reader gets to know Eckels’ feelings, thoughts and all the action through his perspective:
“Strange”, murmured Eckels. “Up ahead, sixty million years, Election Day over. Keith made President. Everyone celebrating. And here we are, a million years lost, and they don’t exist. The things we worried about for months, a lifetime, not even born or thought about yet.” (p. 231, ll. 37-40)
Setting and time
In the beginning, the action takes place in the future, in the year 2055. The reader knows about the existence of a Time Machine that can take people anywhere into the past. This is exactly what Eckels desires. He is taken into the times of dinosaurs, after which he returns into a changed future. The two main settings are the Time Safari company and th...