Bradbury employs poetic devices in his story "A Sound of Thunder." For one thing, he utilizes ironies: The reversal of hunted/hunter, the aplomb/cowardice of Eckels, the insignificance/monumental importance of a single butterfly.
In addition to these ironies, Bradbury employs metaphor. "The sound of thunder" is first the massive movement of the Tyrannosaurus rex and at the end of the story, the echoing of both the memory of this dinosaur and the shot from the rifle of Travis.
Paradox is another poetic device in use by Bradbury. He write of the "gliding ballet step" of the dinosaur, and it is "balanced for its ten-tons." Its "body twitched even while the monster itself did not move. Of course, the concept of going forward to the past in the time machine is a paradox. And, the theme is presented in this very paradox. Everything in the past affects everything in the present and in the future.
As T. S. Eliot wrote,
Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future,/And time future contained in time past.
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