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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
By midafternoon, the survivors have restored the air conditioning and other computer systems to normal function. After a call to the mainland, the Costa Rican authorities have promised to evacuate them with helicopters. Eight are dead and six are missing, leaving only about 10 survivors. Tim runs a headcount on the dinosaurs. The count has dropped from 292 to 203. With the animals released from their formerly isolated enclosures, they’re reaching a more sustainable Jurassic equilibrium, as predation picks up. As an example, Gennaro, Grant, and Ellie watch a pack of six raptors take down a hadrosaur on one of the video monitors. The paleontologists stare at the screens, watching the living behavior of dinosaurs they know only through fossils.
As if to prove Malcolm’s assertion that life will always find a way to balance itself, the survivors watch the park animals turn the island into a true nature preserve. Readers can imagine that over time, if allowed to live unchecked, the ecosystem would stabilize based on the availability of resources. And with a sense of order and safety restored, Grant and Ellie can once again appreciate the incredible opportunity to observe living dinosaurs achieved through technology. This provides a reminder of the promise of scientific and technological innovation: the island could have been amazing if Hammond’s greed and selfishness hadn’t destroyed it.
Themes
Muldoon reminds Grant about approaching dusk; if the survivors want to find the raptor breeding grounds, they need to do it quickly. Everyone expects that the Costa Rican government will bomb the island into oblivion as soon as they evacuate the survivors. Gennaro can’t wait for them to finish off the dangerous theme park. This angers Grant, who slams the lawyer into a wall and insists that Gennaro needs to take responsibility for his part in the fiasco. He sold investors on the concept without explaining it fully; he failed to supervise the business in which he and his firm were investors; and he let Hammond—a known liar—“screw around with the most dangerous technology in human history.” Grant insists that Gennaro accompany them to the raptor nest to help count the wild herd. No one can clean up the mess until they understand its full extent.
Hammond exists in a state of blissful denial about the consequences of Jurassic Park, and no one has been able to break through to him. Gennaro, on the other hand, has witnessed the park’s dangers firsthand. He has no excuse for his own denial and refusal of responsibility, and Grant forces him to see the consequences of InGen’s reckless work. He insists that no one can clean up the mess without understanding its size, which requires a visual assessment. In other words, just as the park operators couldn’t see what they weren’t looking for, the survivors can’t fix what they haven’t accurately assessed.
Themes
After watching the raptors’ movements on the wall map, Ellie has hypothesized that their nest sits on the southern end of the island, near the volcanic steam fields. The area provides warmth and—thanks to waterworks created by the park to control flooding—water and shelter. Ellie asks Tim to bring up a map of the water tunnels. But first, he reveals his discovery of an unmarked storage room behind the maintenance building. Even Arnold doesn’t seem to have known about it because he didn’t try to access it at any point during the catastrophe. But now the survivors find an armory filled with potent nerve gas grenades.
The park’s waterworks offer another reminder that the island only looks like an untouched wilderness. In reality, almost all of it bears the imprint of human activity. And ironically, these places where park operators intervened provide room for wild, chaotic nature to thrive out of sight. The discovery of the deadly agent storage room remains something of a mystery. It indicates that someone has acknowledged the park’s true danger—but without blaming any park operator directly for seeing the danger and subsequently hiding it.
Themes
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After gathering weapons, Ellie, Grant, Gennaro, and Muldoon head to the garage, where Lex plays with the juvenile raptor Grant captured the previous day. She helps them put a radio collar on the animal which they hope will allow them to track it back to the nest. As she handles the animal, they realize that its skin color changes slightly in response to stress. It must have some imported chameleon DNA. This reminds Muldoon to ask Grant about the frog DNA. Grant explains that many species—including, most commonly, amphibians—can change from female to male in environments where all the animals are the same sex. He thinks the dinosaurs accomplished this feat so they could breed. Everyone but Lex piles into the Jeep as she releases the raptor back into the wild and shoos it off to find its home.
Despite her terrifying escape through the island, Lex quickly seems to forgive the dinosaurs and goes back to treating them like glorified pets. Her willingness to forgive and forget suggests humanity’s limited insight and tendency to repeat its mistakes. This also demonstrates the necessity of destroying the island and the dinosaurs lest anyone get clever ideas about trying the exercise again. And Grant finally finishes explaining his hypothesis about the dinosaurs’ unexpected reproductive ability. The ability to change sexes illustrates the unpredictability of nature and offers readers yet another reminder of how little knowledge and control humans have when it comes to the natural world.
Themes
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In the Jeep, Gennaro asks Grant what to expect in the raptor nest, and Grant confesses he doesn’t know. Although he’s an expert, he’s only studied fossils “distorted by the weight of millennia.” He has hypotheses and guesses, but no sure knowledge. In the face of Gennaro’s rising frustration and fear, Grant explains that scientists don’t even know much about the nesting habits of living reptiles. But what they do know suggests that even cold-blooded reptiles care greatly about defending their young. And anyway, dinosaur behavior might be closer to birds than reptiles. Once the search party has reached the steam vents, Gennaro wants to know how Grant and Ellie remain calm in the face of the unknown. Ellie suspects that Grant does feel nervous. But he’s also thought about encountering dinosaurs for his whole life. Gennaro reflects that there isn’t anything he’s thought about or waited for that intensely.
Grant admits the limits of his knowledge, demonstrating the attitude the book wants scientists (and humankind generally) to have toward nature. His humility contrasts with Hammond’s serene assumption of power and Gennaro’s panicked desire to feel like humans have the ability to control—or at least protect themselves from—the world around them. But as Grant explains, humankind can’t know what it doesn’t know. Important discoveries require careful observation. And we must always remember that nature has the capacity to surprise us. Only by understanding these truths can humans calmly face the natural world, as Grant himself faces the prospect of the raptor nest.
Themes
The juvenile raptor—or a juvenile raptor—pops in and out of view among the rocks, almost like he’s playing a game with the search party. Ellie realizes the stunning implications of this behavior. Among modern living creatures, only humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas have the capacity to “invent and execute plans.” Although, as Grant points out, scientists are realizing that some primates and birds have symbolic intelligence—the ability to think and organize knowledge through images—and the capacity for language. As Gennaro grumbles that no intelligent bird has ever stalked him, the juvenile disappears from view down a hole.
The raptor’s unexpected behavior shows signs of intelligence rare among living animals. And it reinforces the book’s claims—given life by Grant, Ellie, and Malcolm—that nature is far more complex and surprising than most people give it credit it for. Ignoring this truth can be dangerous. The intelligence of animals also calls into question human primacy on earth. The illusion of control that men like Hammond have rests on the sense that humans possess an innate superiority to other creatures, but current science complicates that picture.
Themes
Grant lowers a camera into the hole, and although it can’t see deep enough into the cave to show the dinosaurs, its microphone picks up the sound of many animals. Grant dons a gas mask and prepares to drop into the hole. Gennaro, scared to face so many animals, suggests that they drop the nerve gas grenades down first to kill the dinosaurs. But Grant refuses; the gas will cause convulsions and if any dinosaurs trample the nests in their death throes, they might compromise the population count. Once again pointing out that Gennaro has a responsibility to participate in assessing and cleaning up the mess of Jurassic Park, Grant ignores his protests and drops into the hole.
As in every other circumstance of obscured sight, the camera’s inability to show the raptor nest and the necessity of looking with one’s own eyes reinforces the book’s claim that a person’s vantage point necessarily limits their field of vision and thus their understanding. True insight requires as clear and accurate a vision as a person can achieve—and technology doesn’t necessarily guarantee better insight. And to gain this insight, Grant and Ellie must demonstrate a respectful attitude toward nature, rather than taking the bombastic, destructive approach Gennaro would prefer.
Themes
