Butterfly Symbol Analysis

In “A Sound of Thunder,” the butterfly is a symbol of the delicate ecological balance of the natural world. Although it is small, Bradbury reminds us, a butterfly—like every other creature—has its own role to play in the environmental order. The butterfly becomes the most visible manifestation of Mr. Travis’s warning that crushing even the tiniest creature could prove disastrous for all of humanity. While Travis does not specifically mention butterflies in his extended explanation of the dangers of interfering in the prehistoric environment, he names various small life-forms such as “a small bird, a roach, a flower even” as potentially important. The butterfly that Mr. Eckels crushes is, in a sense, the intersection of all of these things: a small, beautiful flying insect. It is so delicate as to have initially gone unnoticed in the aftermath of the hunt. Only after witnessing the subtle changes to the future’s atmosphere does Eckels think to check his boots and find the crushed insect. The butterfly’s green and gold coloration also echoes the description of the Tyrannosaurus rex, implicitly suggesting that its death is just as significant as the dinosaur’s.

Further, today’s reader may be reminded of “the butterfly effect,” a chaos theory term describing how small changes to a system can lead to broad and unpredictable consequences. This dynamic is played out in “A Sound of Thunder”: by stepping on and killing a butterfly, Eckels inadvertently changes the course of natural and human history. Through unknown means, the death of this small creature changes the result of the U.S. presidential election, illustrating the interdependency between humans and the natural world.