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Fourth Iteration: The Main Road
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
Elsewhere on the island, Dr. Harding, Ellie, and Gennaro find the road blocked by a massive fallen tree. Harding can’t reach the control room or the other vehicles on the radio. Assuming that the others have made it back safely to the visitor center, Harding prepares to return via the more circuitous maintenance road system.
Encountering the fallen tree shows just how little thought the park planners have put into hardening their infrastructure even against easily predictable hazards like extreme weather. While individual storms may still be somewhat unpredictable (as Malcolm has asserted), intense tropical storms are common in Costa Rica.
Themes
As lightning streaks outside, the control room monitors go black. All park systems are surge-protected, but Arnold isn’t so confident about the modems, with which Nedry is sending data to his team. The screens flicker back on after a moment, but Arnold’s relief is short-lived. No sooner does the system reboot than Muldoon bursts in saying that someone has taken the gas-powered Jeep. Because Dr. Harding hasn’t returned, Arnold and Muldoon assume he stopped to pick up the rest of the visitors on his way back. No one wants to tell Hammond that his grandchildren aren’t back yet, especially not Arnold, who knows that he must figure out what Nedry did to the computer system.
As designed, the park systems have relatively few points of failure and little redundancy. When they’re running properly, they successfully automate many park functions. But when the unexpected occurs—either deliberate internal sabotage or storm-related power surges—their vulnerability to disruption becomes apparent. Yet again, the park operators’ assurance in the power of their automated systems appears short-sighted and foolish. Not only that, but without their radios, video feeds, or motion tracking operational, they become literally blind to what’s happening in the park.
Themes
