- How does a character’s awareness of death influence their choices, values, or growth?
Eckels’ awareness of death does not lead to growth but to panic. This largely influenced his subsequent behavior and led to a tremendous disaster. The story talks about the main character, Eckels, who traveled back to the era of dinosaurs and tried to kill a Tyrannosaurus. When Tyrannosaurus first appeared, Eckels was shocked, and shortly, panic and fear came and controlled him, causing him to run out of the path, which was not allowed and would cause a severe problem because it might change the future, even with a tiny interaction with the world. When he first saw the Tyrannosaurus, he said, “It can’t be killed,” which reflects his realization of how weak human beings are, especially in the face of a huge and powerful element. The fear of death largely influenced his following behaviors and indirectly led to the ultimate mistake. This story tells us when we should not be influenced by death and face it directly, because the fear of death might cause panic and loss of reasoning.
- How do authors choose to portray death (as peaceful, violent, sudden, symbolic, or gradual), and why does that choice matter?
Bradbury portrays death as violent and symbolic, as there are actually 2 timelines described in this story, the timeline without human interaction and a timeline when they traveled back. In this story, there are 2 deaths mentioned: the death of Eckels and the death of that Tyrannosaurus. They identified different aspects of death. The fear of death of Eckels is violent and sudden, as he does not think of this at all until he sees the Tyrannosaurus, and as paragraph 1 mentioned, this causes a severe impact both to him and to the future world. The death of Tyrannosaurus is both determined and sudden and symbolic. He illustrates the death of the Tyrannosaurus as “Like a stone idol, like a mountain avalanche, Tyrannosaurus fell.” The animal dies not as a sudden event, but as a confirmed event, as he describes, “That’s the giant tree that was scheduled to fall and kill this animal originally.” Although Tyrannosaurus would be killed by the tree without human interaction, it is a different thing while human interacted before it. This matters because the death he mentioned here is not meaningful by itself, but the human interference is unexpected, and this unexpectedness would probably cause disaster.
- Does literature suggest that death gives life its value — or that life has value despite death?
The story suggests that life gains value because of its interconnectedness, not simply because it ends. As Paragraph 1 and Paragraph 2 suggest, the death would cause disaster, and the author categorizes it as violent. In this story, death causes loss of reasoning and then leads to making wrong decisions, and raises a moral conflict of killing an animal. Eckels’ was already meaningful, represented by those fun moments such as traveling back and watching dinosaurs. We can see through Travis’ explanation, “The stomp of your foot, on one mouse, could start an earthquake.” This reveals that even the smallest event in a life matters because it sustains an entire future. Death does not give life value, but every single element in life already provides infinite value.