introducing the story literary focus: style reading skills: cause and effect a sound of thunder by...

Introducing the Story

Literary Focus: Style

Reading Skills: Cause and Effect

A Sound of Thunderby Ray Bradbury

Feature Menu

A Sound of Thunderby Ray Bradbury

A Sound of Thunderby Ray Bradbury

Who controls the past controls the future. —George Orwell

A Sound of ThunderIntroducing the Story

It’s the year 2055. Eckels, a wealthy hunter, wants to travel back in time to shoot a ferocious dinosaur. But he gets in over his head when he books passage with Time Safari, Inc.

• This story explores the possibility that even tiny changes to the environment of the past can drastically alter the future.

T-rex lived during the late Cretaceous Period. What other life forms were around then?

insects similar to today’s

marine invertebrates

A Sound of ThunderIntroducing the Story

[End of Section]

the first flowering plants

Style—the particular way a writer uses language.

A Sound of ThunderLiterary Focus: Style

• Style is also created through the sentence patterns writers use. Sentences can be short or long, simple or complicated.

• Writers use diction, or word choice, to create style. For example, some writers use long, elegant words; others prefer shorter, everyday words.

A Sound of ThunderLiterary Focus: Style

The use of vivid images and figurative language often plays a part in a writer’s style.

• Images—words and phrases that appeal to the senses.

• Figurative language—imaginative comparisons between seemingly unlike things.

Ray Bradbury tells this science-fiction story in a lush style.

A Sound of ThunderLiterary Focus: Style

• The setting and the figurative language shape a tense and suspenseful mood, or atmosphere.

• He uses vivid images and imaginative figurative language to create an exotic setting.

As you read “A Sound of Thunder,” notice the elements of Bradbury’s style.

A Sound of ThunderLiterary Focus: Style

• Images: Which of your senses do they appeal to? What feelings do they evoke for you?

• Diction and sentence patterns: How do they create a distinctive writing style?

• Figurative language: How does it help create the setting? the mood?

[End of Section]

The events in a plot are interconnected, like links in a chain: One cause leads to an effect, which causes another effect, and so on.

A Sound of ThunderReading Skills: Cause and Effect

A power outage occurs at 2:30 A.M.

Cause

Valeria’s alarmdoes not go off.

Effect

Valeria’s alarmdoes not go off.

Cause

Valeria is late For school.

Effect

The plot of “A Sound of Thunder” is based on a theoretical cause-and-effect chain that might look something like this:

A Sound of ThunderReading Skills: Cause and Effect

Time-travelinghuman steps on butterfly in past.

This butterflydoes not pass on its genes

Butterflies and the ecosystemis altered.

Humans evolvein differentenvironment.

Moderncivilization is altered.

[End of Section]