Previous
First Iteration: The Beach
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
Dr. Richard Stone heads the Tropical Diseases Laboratory at Columbia University. Medical advances have rendered much of its work mundane, so it surprises the lab when they receive the fragment of an unidentified Costa Rican lizard. Dr. Simpson is away, so his lab sent the lizard over to be screened for potential infectious diseases in the meantime. Someone carefully wrapped the sample to prevent possible biological contamination. And Tina’s drawing has traveled to New York alongside it. Dr. Stone asks a tech to photograph and x-ray the lizard and then run tests on its blood.
Dr. Stone isn’t an expert on reptiles, so he can only screen the sample for dangerous chemicals, bacteria, and viruses. Still, his conclusions about the sample’s species will carry a great deal of weight. The book carefully details the precautions that people took with the lizard’s remains, pointedly reminding readers that any evidence from this sample, uncontaminated by outside sources, should be taken at face value.
Themes
The lizard’s blood isn’t reactive to known viral or bacterial antigens, suggesting that its bites won’t sicken people. The toxicity profiles indicate a slight similarity to the venom of the Indian king cobra, but because cross-reactivity among reptiles is common, Dr. Stone fails to include it in the report he sends back to Dr. Guitierrez. Based on Stone’s report, Guitierrez assumes that Dr. Simpson has confirmed his basilisk lizard identification and that the lack of communicable disease means that the lizards present no serious health risks. Reassured of the accuracy of his hypothesis—that deforestation has driven a lizard species into new and alarming contact with humans—Guitierrez assumes the situation will soon settle down.
Dr. Stone doesn’t report the full results of his tests where they contradict his beliefs about the lizard, namely that it belongs to the basilisk species, since that’s how the sample was labeled. Likewise, when Dr. Guitierrez accepts the report at face value, his assumptions magnify Dr. Stone’s. Although both men look at Tina’s drawing and the sample of the lizard in various ways, neither has the insight to understand what they’re looking at. Their complacency doesn’t just prevent identification of the animal, but it also puts people in danger.
Themes
But at almost the same moment, Costa Rican midwife Elena Morales leaves the side of a newly delivered mother to check on the newborn lying in the next room. She finds three dark green lizards crouched around the bassinette with blood dripping from their noses. She scares them off, but they have eaten through the baby’s face, killing it.
Because Dr. Guitierrez and Dr. Stone both made large assumptions about the lizard attack based on their blind spots and their biases, they failed to appreciate the danger these animals pose. Therefore, their arrogant overconfidence puts innocent victims at risk, reminding readers that humanity’s unaddressed flaws pose a grave risk to human survival, both individually and collectively.
Themes
