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Third Iteration: Control (IV)
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
The tour stops at the southern end of the island, near the stegosaurus enclosure where they find the veterinarian’s Jeep parked by the road. Regis explains that the vet, Dr. Harding, has tranquilized one of the animals for study. The stegosaurs periodically get sick and no one knows why. Eager to help, Ellie approaches the animal to inspect it.
The park planners’ understandable ignorance of dinosaur behavior (since no one has observed living dinosaurs before) provides another example of their blind spots and their attendant inability to account for all the variables in their complex system.
Themes
Ellie’s conversation with Dr. Harding reveals that the animals become sick periodically with symptoms that suggest poisoning from nearby chinaberry bushes. But the bushes show no sign of being eaten and although some berries lie on the ground, she knows they taste so bitter that she can’t imagine the animals willingly ingesting them. Then, she and Grant notice small piles of smooth stones on the ground all around them, and everything clicks into place in their minds. They suspect that the stegosaurus swallow gizzard stones to help their digestion, accidentally taking in some of the berries at the same time and poisoning themselves each time they need a new batch of stones. Out of habit, Grant rifles through a nearby pile of stones, where he makes a startling discovery.
The park’s experts have limited vision in part because of their inexperience with dinosaurs. Harding and Muldoon can only project expectations based on the behavior of modern animals onto the dinosaurs. In contrast, their training as paleontologists—who carefully observe and interpret the signs left behind by ancient life—makes Grant and Ellie attentive to things in the surrounding environment that others miss, like the piles of dinosaur gizzard stones. A person’s perspective and background necessarily limit their sight. And though this isn’t necessarily bad, it does mean that, without a willingness to be open to the evidence, a person can overlook or ignore important details.
Themes
Near the vehicles, Gennaro plays catch with Lex while asking Malcolm how the sick stegosaurus fits into his theories about the island. Malcolm answers with a brief history lesson. People invented computers, he explains, in part to predict the weather. At one time, people believed that if they could gather enough information, they could predict almost anything. But chaos theory holds that some phenomena resist prediction. Life is one of these phenomena, as the history of evolution suggest. Despite all odds, life breaks free and expands to new territories. Life always “finds a way.”
While Grant and Ellie try to help Harding diagnose the sick animals, Malcolm offers Gennaro the opportunity to enlarge his viewpoint with a mini lesson on chaos theory. With the development of science, some humans began to hold the arrogant belief that they could predict—and eventually control—nature itself if only they could gain a deep enough understanding of its processes. What chaos theory proves, however, is that due to the extreme complexity of nature, humanity doesn’t have the capacity for this kind of understanding.
Themes
Muldoon returns to the control room, where Nedry demands that someone bring him a beverage and Arnold monitors the visitors’ stop at the stegosaurus enclosure. The radio signals start to break up because they’re so far away.
In the control room, Arnold continues to engage in a fantasy of god-like omniscience, watching and listening in on the visitors’ vehicles. But he isn’t a god, as his inability to control the radio waves demonstrates.
Themes
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On the tour, Grant’s discovery underwhelms Gennaro. But Grant maintains that the small white fragment in his hand came from a dinosaur egg. Dr. Harding, reminding the guests that all the dinosaurs are sterile females, suggests that it must come from a local bird. But Grant insists that it’s a dinosaur egg. And not just any dinosaur egg—a raptor egg.
Assured that the park’s technology gives them control over nature, Gennaro and Harding try to ignore evidence to the contrary. But Grant’s expert eye—and lack of biases concerning the park’s operations—allows him to see the truth readily.
Themes
