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Prologue: The Bite of the Raptor
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Jurassic Park, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Chaos, Change, and Control
Sight and Insight
Flawed Human Nature
Technology
Summary
Analysis
Mike Bowman, an American real-estate developer, enjoys a vacation in Costa Rica with his wife Ellen and their daughter Tina. It turns out that Ellen picked the country not only for its scenic beaches but also its affordable plastic surgery. Mike wishes that Ellen weren’t so worried about her physical appearance; at 30, she’s very beautiful. As they drive to an isolated beach in the Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve, Tina looks for new animals to add to a list she’s keeping for a school project. At the beach, Tina runs off, hoping to find a sloth. Ellen worries about snakes, but Mike assures her that Tina is safe.
Ellen Bowman’s obsession with her physical appearance—demonstrating vanity—points to the flaws that still exist in human nature, despite its advanced state of development. The Bowmans visit a pristine beach in a country filled with immensely diverse ecosystems, but Ellen can only worry about herself. Thus, when a dinosaur attacks her daughter, her self-focus metaphorically suggests the ways in which humanity ignores the true threats to its existence in favor of focusing on superficial issues.
Themes
After a few minutes wading in the ocean, Tina heads towards the tangle of palm and mangrove trees that line the beach, hoping to spot a sloth in the wild. In the beach’s sand, she sees vestiges of local birds—three-toed footprints in the sand. Most look small, but she sees some large and deep ones, too. She hears a bird-like chirping, and then, from the shadow of the trees, a chicken-sized lizard appears, balancing itself with a thick tail as it walks on its hind legs. As the curious, unafraid creature approaches her, Tina realizes it made the larger sets of tracks. She holds out her open hand, and it scrambles up her arm, towards her face. Still near their car, Ellen and Mike hear Tina’s terrified screams.
Many of the experts in Jurassic Park, especially in the first few sections, or “Iterations,” fail to understand events in Costa Rica, because their biases make them ignore the obvious but implausible fact that dinosaurs roam the jungles of modern Costa Rica. With her unbiased child’s eyes, Tina makes more accurate observations of the signs, like the footprints, than the adult experts. Her perceptiveness contributes to the book’s argument that insight requires accepting the evidence one actually sees, not the evidence one wants or expects to see.
Themes
