Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park

by

Michael Crichton

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Jurassic Park makes teaching easy.

Dennis Nedry Character Analysis

Dennis Nedry is the brilliant computer systems analyst hired by InGen to design the computer systems for Jurassic Park. His crass and disrespectful attitude bothers John Arnold and Dr. Henry Wu. Shrewd, intelligent, and greedy, Nedry resents John Hammond and his company after they force him to do extra work without pay. Thus, he willingly accepts Lewis Dodgson’s offer of $1.5 million for stealing some of InGen’s dinosaur embryos. In the end, however, his greed proves to be his downfall. When he deactivates the security systems to steal the embryos, he unwittingly turns off the fences. And when he gets lost driving to the dock to hand the goods off to his contact, a herd of escaped dinosaurs attacks and eats him.

Dennis Nedry Quotes in Jurassic Park

The Jurassic Park quotes below are all either spoken by Dennis Nedry or refer to Dennis Nedry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Chaos, Change, and Control  Theme Icon
).
Fourth Iteration: Control (I) Quotes

Hammond was like every other management guy Arnold had ever seen. Whether it was Disney or the Navy, management guys always behaved the same. They never understood the technical issues; and they thought that screaming was the way to make things happen. […]

But screaming didn’t make any difference at all to the problems that Arnold now faced. The computer didn’t care if it was screamed at. The power network didn’t care if it was screamed at. Technical systems were completely indifferent to all this explosive human emotion. If anything, screaming was counterproductive, because Arnold now faced the virtual certainty that Nedry wasn’t coming back, which meant that Arnold himself had to go into the computer code and try and figure out what had gone wrong. It was going to be a painstaking job; he’d need to be calm and careful.

Related Characters: Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ian Malcolm, John Hammond, John Arnold, Dennis Nedry
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:
Fifth Iteration: Control Quotes

But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young. You can make progress very fast. There is no discipline lasting many decades. There is no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature. There is only a get-rich-quick, make-a-name-for-yourself-fast philosophy. Cheat, lie, falsify—it doesn’t matter. Not to you, or your colleagues. No one will criticize you. No one has any standards. They are all trying to do the same thing: to do something big, and do it fast.

Related Characters: Dr. Ian Malcolm (speaker), Dr. Alan Grant, John Hammond, Dennis Nedry, Lewis Dodgson
Page Number: 343
Explanation and Analysis:
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Dennis Nedry Quotes in Jurassic Park

The Jurassic Park quotes below are all either spoken by Dennis Nedry or refer to Dennis Nedry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Chaos, Change, and Control  Theme Icon
).
Fourth Iteration: Control (I) Quotes

Hammond was like every other management guy Arnold had ever seen. Whether it was Disney or the Navy, management guys always behaved the same. They never understood the technical issues; and they thought that screaming was the way to make things happen. […]

But screaming didn’t make any difference at all to the problems that Arnold now faced. The computer didn’t care if it was screamed at. The power network didn’t care if it was screamed at. Technical systems were completely indifferent to all this explosive human emotion. If anything, screaming was counterproductive, because Arnold now faced the virtual certainty that Nedry wasn’t coming back, which meant that Arnold himself had to go into the computer code and try and figure out what had gone wrong. It was going to be a painstaking job; he’d need to be calm and careful.

Related Characters: Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ian Malcolm, John Hammond, John Arnold, Dennis Nedry
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:
Fifth Iteration: Control Quotes

But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young. You can make progress very fast. There is no discipline lasting many decades. There is no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature. There is only a get-rich-quick, make-a-name-for-yourself-fast philosophy. Cheat, lie, falsify—it doesn’t matter. Not to you, or your colleagues. No one will criticize you. No one has any standards. They are all trying to do the same thing: to do something big, and do it fast.

Related Characters: Dr. Ian Malcolm (speaker), Dr. Alan Grant, John Hammond, Dennis Nedry, Lewis Dodgson
Page Number: 343
Explanation and Analysis: