Ray Bradbury: a Sound of Thunder

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Ann-Sophie Leys Ms. Beth Hiskey English proficiency III 25 May 2012 An observation of nostalgia in Ray Bradbury’s work: A sound of thunder. For the science-fiction short story A Sound of Thunder, Ray Bradbury uses a journey back into time to reflect on the present. Bradbury uses both fantasy and science-fiction in his works, he wanted his own boyhood moods and images which are linked to carnivals to come back in his writings. “Whenever a travelling circus or carnival came through (…) Bradbury and his younger brother were always present” (Sullivan, 1309). Even though the three key themes are often discussed in criticism on the works of Ray Bradbury, fantasy and nostalgia receive the most attention in Sullivan’s and Linkfield’s article. In the latter article for example, he specifies his focus in ‘The fiction of Ray Bradbury: universal themes in Midwestern settings’ mostly by discussing the dangers which, according to Bradbury’s work, nostalgia entails. Anita T. Sullivan on the other hand argues in ‘Ray Bradbury and Fantasy’ that nostalgia expands the reader’s spirits and provides the possibility to escape real life. Although they clearly have different opinions on nostalgia, they both argue that his work contains fantasy elements which can be linked to his childhood. The short story A Sound of Thunder demonstrates Linkfield’s belief that Bradbury had the intention to highlight the negative side of escapism as a warning for human beings although Sullivan considers nostalgia as a positive escape from the Primary world. Bradbury’s short story can be linguistically analyzed to indicate that he had the intention to warn his audience for nostalgia, the quote “Stay on the Path. Stay on the Path!” (Bradbury, 107) by Lesperance has a great significance here. Through the use of a capital letter P, Bradbury shows that it’s
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