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
In the control room, Arnold hoots in triumph: he’s found the command to reverse Nedry’s sabotage. No sooner has he executed it than lights begin to come on across the island. Miles away, the sudden blaze wakes Grant. He decides to sleep for a few more minutes before going out into the sauropod field to wave at the motion sensors to attract the control room’s attention.
For the moment, it seems, Arnold has used his canny human intelligence to regain control of the island. But in reality, he only has regained control over the park’s humanmade systems, including the lights. His control doesn’t extend to nature itself.
Themes
As the park systems come back online, the control room identifies three areas of the electric fence that need repairs: where the tyrannosaur knocked the fence down by the main road; where the tyrannosaur evidently knocked the fence down to get into the sauropod paddock; and by the jungle river. The motion sensors come back online, and the computer begins a count of the animals. There’s no sign of Grant and the children yet, but Arnold isn’t worried. He assumes they are probably sleeping up a tree somewhere. The computers can’t identify motionless animals, even ones as big as the tyrannosaurs.
Reminders of human limitation dampen Arnold’s success in restoring systems; Grant and the children remain unaccounted for. The park operators can see a lot, but they cannot see—and thus cannot even react to, much less hope to control—what lies outside of the range of their cameras and sensors.
Themes
Gennaro leaves the control room to check on Malcolm. He needs surgery, but with Dr. Harding’s attention and high doses of morphine, he appears relaxed and stable. He describes the tyrannosaur attack to the lawyer. The bite isn’t the worst of it; his worst injuries, including the compound fracture to his leg, resulted from the dinosaur casually tossing him through the air. Harding explains that most of the carnivores kill their prey by snapping necks, not by biting. Malcolm was so small compared to the animal that its thrashing left him relatively unharmed. And, he maintains, it attacked him rather halfheartedly. He survived, but he tells Gennaro that he’s still worried about a “Malcolm Effect.”
Malcolm’s injuries point toward another potential consequence of automating tasks and reducing human staff and facilities in the park. Without a doctor on staff or appropriate medical facilities, people injured on the island (including workers that the raptors attacked in the past) must be taken to the mainland for care, greatly increasing their chances of mortality. With some pain management, Malcolm recovers his spirits, but even with his mind dulled a little by opiate drugs, he doesn’t lose sight of the park’s vulnerability to chaos and instability.
Themes
