Sound of Thunder
similes
There was a sound like a gigantic bonfire burning all of Time, all the years and all the parchment calendars, all the hours piled high and set aflame.
It was like standing by a wrecked locomotive or a steam shovel at quitting time, all the valves being released or levered tight.
The Monster twitched its jeweler’s hands down to fondle at the men, to twist them in half, to crush them like berries, to cram them into its teeth and its screaming throat.
It was never like this before. I was always sure I’d come through alive. I had good guides, good safaris, and safety. This time, I figured wrong. I’ve met my match and admit it.
Its armored flesh glittered like a thousand green coins. The coins, crusted with slime, steamed. In the slime, tiny insects wriggled, so that the entire body seemed to twitch and undulate, even while the monster itself did not move.
Metaphors
The body hit, ten tons of cold flesh and stone
The Monster lashed its armored tail, and twitched its snake jaws, and laid still.
Its boulder-stone eyes leveled with the men.
Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior.
“Shooting my dinosaur,” Eckels finished it for him. “A Tyrannosaurus rex. The Tyrant Lizard, the most incredible monster in history.”
Personification
Within, you could hear the sighs and murmurs as the furthest chambers of it died, the organs malfunctioning, liquids running a final instant from pocket to sac to spleen, everything shutting off, closing up forever.
Foreshadowing
“Does this safari guarantee I come back alive?”
“We guarantee nothing
The Machine slowed; its scream fell to a murmur
Don’t shoot till we give the word. Stay on the path. Stay on the Path!”
Sensory Details
Sights
Smell
Sounds
Touches
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It moved into a sunlit area warily, its beautifully reptilian hands feeling the air.
The colors, white, gray, blue, orange, in the wall, in the furniture, in the sky beyond the window, were . . . were . . . And there was a feel.
He could feel them moving there, beyond the walls, almost, like so many chess pieces blown in a dry wind . . .
A windstorm from the beast’s mouth engulfed them in the stench of slime and old blood.
Far birds’ cries blew on a wind, and the smell of tar and an old salt sea, moist grasses, and flowers the color of blood.
:Eckels stood smelling the air, and there was a thing to the air, a chemical taint so subtle, so slight, that only a faint cry of his subliminal senses warned him it was there.
“He hasn’t seen us yet.”
Look for the red paint! Don’t shoot till we give the word
“I didn’t realize it would be this big,” said Eckels. “I miscalculated, that’s all. And now I want out.”
“It sees us!”
sounds like flying tents filled the sky, and those were pterodactyls soaring with cavernous gray wings, gigantic bats of delirium and night fever.
he heard Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the weapon.
Sounds like music
Theme
In the story the author's message is to be careful for what you wish for. The reason why I he choose this is because echels wanted amazing, and also wanted something that was hard and challenging and that’s what he got. Eckels couldn’t handle this because it was to challenging so he went to the machine and messed everything up because he couldn’t handle what he wished for.
(Eckels, not looking back, walked blindly to the edge of the Path, his gun limp in his arms, stepped off the Path, and walked, not knowing it, in the jungle. His feet sank into the green moss. His legs moved him, and he felt alone and remote from the events behind.)