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
Tim finds Lex huddled in a drainage pipe, chewing on her baseball mitt, weeping, and banging her head on the pipe. Other than her emotional duress, she seems unharmed. Tim tries to coax her out, but she refuses to leave the pipe because of the “aminals.” She only emerges when he promises that the adults are coming. Dr. Grant, she reveals, passed close by just a few minutes ago. She calls out his name, and within a few seconds, he emerges from the trees.
Lex shows clear signs of trauma related to the dinosaur attack, including self-destructive behavior and childhood regression. She longs for an adult to take charge in ways that will reassure her of her safety. In a way, this represents a very human desire to believe that the world is understandable and predictable and therefore safe. But, as Malcolm has argued, and as events are proving, this isn’t the case.
Themes
After fleeing the car, Ed Regis wedges himself into a hiding place among some boulders on the hill below the road. As he calms down, he begins to feel horror and shame over abandoning the kids, but he can’t work up the nerve to leave. At least, he can’t until he realizes he’s covered in giant, disgusting leeches, and he hears Lex calling Dr. Grant in the distance. Regis takes control of himself and prepares to resume control of the situation. But when Lex’s voice falls silent (along with almost everything else), he concludes that something might have happened to her. And if she doesn’t need help, he reasons, it makes more sense to start back towards camp.
Regis’s (entirely appropriate) shame over abandoning the children isn’t strong enough to overcome his instinctual fear of the powerful dinosaurs; only another equally distressing emotion—disgust over the leeches—propels him from his hiding spot. It’s possible to read Regis—and the rest of the park operators—as parasitic leeches, willing to take advantage of and expose others to dangers for the purpose of enriching themselves.
Themes
A relieved Grant checks Tim and Lex for injuries. Hers are minor; his are more serious, but both children can still walk. As for himself, Grant has bleeding scratches from being raked by the tyrannosaur’s claws when it kicked him and the car. He wonders why the tyrannosaur, which could have so easily killed them all, didn’t. Worried about the possibility of encountering either the juvenile or adult dinosaur, he decides that they should wait in place for rescue.
Grant and the children all bear the consequences of the park operators’ callous disregard for safety in favor of their greed and their arrogant assumption of control over nature. In contrast, Wu, Arnold, and Hammond sit in the resort buildings, still relatively safe and protected.
Themes
Lex complains about being hungry, but Grant silences her. Ed Regis stands in plain sight near the road, pressed up against a tree trunk while the juvenile tyrannosaur emerges from the trees. It walks past Regis at first, but when he lets down his guard and resumes his hike back to camp, it bursts through the trees again, knocking him to the ground. With growing horror, Grant realizes that the animal is playing with Regis, allowing him to stand up only to knock him down again. Finally, however, the creature decides to finish him off with a vicious bite. And then, the sound of the night-vision goggles falling from Tim’s head captures her attention. Grant grabs the children’s hands and begins to run.
It’s important to note how silently the big tyrannosaur can move through the trees. Nature—through the vehicle of dinosaur behavior—continues to show itself as a force of unexpected revelation. And yet again, Grant demonstrates the proper scientific attitude, paying careful attention to the dinosaur’s behavior until he can form a hypothesis about its actions. In the attack on Ed Regis, the tyrannosaur shows that nature can be as cruel and inhumane as it is unpredictable.
Themes
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