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Fourth Iteration: Control (II)
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
It’s getting late and Lex asks Grant to carry her, complaining about getting tired. The paleontologist and the children are in the tyrannosaur paddock. The park’s motion sensors have markings on them that he’s trying to use to navigate; he and Tim quickly realize they’re labeled around a central point like a compass. They press north, back towards the resort buildings. While Grant carries Lex for a while, Tim walks alongside, opening up about his parents’ divorce. He wants to know about Grant’s and Ellie’s personal lives. Grant explains that he himself is a widower and Ellie is engaged to a doctor in Chicago. Everyone grows more tired, and Grant knows they need to stop. But where? He remembers seeing concrete bunkers on the plans and climbs up a tree to look for one. Fortunately, one lies less than half a mile away, just beyond the division between the tyrannosaur and sauropod areas.
Grant has kept his head in the wake of two narrow escapes from the tyrannosaur’s jaws, but the nonfunctioning park systems, including the motion sensors, stymie his attempts to contact the visitor center. A reliance on the park’s main system means that the operators haven’t correctly predicted or planned for emergencies, leaving the animals and guests alike exposed to danger. Like scientists Grant and Ellie, young Tim shows a burning desire to gather information about the world around him, whether it’s about dinosaurs or people’s families. He makes meaning through careful study of the facts rather than trying to make life conform to his expectations. The very fact of his parents’ divorce offers a powerful reminder that he can’t control life.
Themes
Lex still quakes at the sound of any “aminal” in the distance, but when the trio comes to the fence, she’s quick to mock Tim for his fear of heights. Nevertheless, all three climb over into the moat without incident. The smooth concrete of its walls gives them more difficulty, but Grant eventually finds a convenient vine to climb up. Exhausted, they squeeze between the bars in the fence around the maintenance building and collapse on the haybales inside.
The extensive fence and moat systems that the park planners designed have utterly failed to contain the dinosaurs, yet they impede the human guests’ progress back toward the safety of the visitor centers. This suggest a human-centric design bias underlying some of the park’s failures to accept chaos and plan for unexpected or unlikely events (like power outages and dinosaur escapes).
Themes
