The Time Machine and the Sound of Thunder are both science fiction stories. Their central plots are about Time Travel. Compare and contrast these two stories.

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Name: Deborah Abbott

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The Time Machine and the Sound of Thunder are both science fiction stories. Their central plots are about Time Travel. Compare and contrast these two stories.

This assessment has asked me to compare and contrast the stories of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and The Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury.  

In this assignment the differences in language and characters will be compared and contrasted. The genre of the short story will be contrasted with the short novel. The different ways the authors are separated both by time and geography will be noted and commented upon.

The language in the two pieces is remarkably different, H.G. Wells using the old-fashioned language of a gentleman’s club contrast with the American of Ray Bradbury. This ‘modern’ language is easier to comprehend and makes the story flow; in the Wells story the language fails to hold the attention of the readers.

H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine pre 20th century and was English so his book will have had English influence on the language he used, and the settings he used for the Time Travellers friends.

Ray Bradbury wrote The Sound of Thunder post 20th century and was American so this would have affected the language that is used in his story as well as the way life has changed but is still very different from the life that we live in modern times. The Time Machine will have influenced Bradbury with some of his ideas that H.G. Wells had used in his story.

Both of the stories are written by men additionally all of the main characters are men this will have been because of the time period that they where both written in, in each of the authors time periods women didn’t have a leading role in life they were just there for the children and the cooking only in more modern times have women started taking the leading role in films, books, TV. Programs but still in these modern time men are still considered the stronger of the human species.

H.G. Wells is considered one of the fathers of science fiction. Science fiction is still fiction but it uses possibly scientific theories to underline the story lines. Science fiction asks the question  “what if?” and any thing can happen because of all the different types of new discoveries we are making all the time, this helps new and old science fiction writer with new ideas about what could happen if they wrote about this or that.

H.G. Well’s Time Machine has inspired thousands of science fiction authors to write about time travel and how things could change, the most common thing that the authors change are things that are problems in their time and what it would be like to change it. Wells also thought that Science could change every thing and sort out all of the problems of modern man.  

The Time Machine is written in first person like a journal or a diary and the Time Traveller travels into the future to see what “progress” mankind has made but finds out that mankind has split up to become two totally opposite creatures that the Time Traveller calls the Elio and Morlocks. The Morlocks have become a cannibal race and eats the other half of mankind called the Elio. As the Time Traveller is finding out how life is in the time that he has moved into he starts having feelings for one of the Elio called Weena. When the Time Traveller returns to his own time his friends do not believe what he is say even though he brought back a flower that non of them has seen before and could not explain what it was. In the end of the story the Time Traveller goes back to the future and never returns. Some of the characters thought that he might have gone back to see Weena but others thought that he might have gone into a ‘nearer age’ to where men are still men.

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H. G. Well’s story shows that Well’s thought that if men kept becoming more and more advanced then he would soon become weak and lose his dominance, Wells demonstrates his ideas though the actions of the Elio.

The Sound of Thunder is written in Third person as though someone was there watching it all happen. The Sound of Thunder is set in the future so that the characters can go back into time. Again in this story all of the Characters are male. Eckels has paid the Company to travel back in time to go dinosaur hunting.

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