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
Dr. Roberta Carter, newly transplanted from a high-stress residency in emergency medicine in Chicago to an idyllic fishing village in Costa Rica, stares at the torrential downpour outside the medical clinic. She’s getting tired of the unending rain. Suddenly, she hears the approach of a helicopter through the storm. The aircraft marked “InGen Construction” lands outside and disgorges two crewmen, an injured worker on a stretcher, and a man in a yellow raincoat named Ed Regis.
Although Dr. Carter has moved to a tropical paradise, the unending rain offers a pointed reminder that humans have limited control over nature or natural processes. Notably, Malcolm uses the weather repeatedly as an example of chaos theory. The fact that the helicopter attempts to land in a storm indicates the seriousness of the worker’s injuries, and by extension the resort’s unacknowledged dangers
Themes
The injured worker—a kid no older than 18—looks like the victim of a wild animal mauling, although a clearly nervous Ed Regis tells Dr. Carter that a backhoe ran over and dragged him. Without dirt or contamination in the wounds, she doesn’t believe him—and her doubt increases when she spots defensive wounds on the worker’s hands and arms. The worker is in shock, and he whispers “Lo sa raptor” while she examines him. Her assistant refuses to help clean the foul-smelling wounds, worried that a “hupia”—a local bogeyman believed to hurt and steal small children—caused them. The worker suffers vomiting spells and seizures, and then he dies. The InGen crew collect his body.
Because Dr. Carter chooses to pay attention and interpret the evidence in front of her, she correctly guesses the true nature of the accident, even if she can’t identify the animal. Her hypothesis shows how far unbiased judgement can go toward uncovering the truth, and her inability to interpret the worker’s whispers reminds us that the available information will always limit insight. The assistant’s identification of the “raptor” with the “hupia” bogeyman point toward forces in nature beyond human understanding or control.
Themes
Later, using her Spanish dictionary, Dr. Carter learns that “raptor” means “ravisher” or “abductor.” When local midwife Elena Morales comes in with a woman in labor, Dr. Carter tries to ask her about raptors and “hupias.” Elena doesn’t want to invite bad luck by talking about such topics, but she does tell Dr. Carter that raptors steal victims, they don’t maul them. Still later, in her English dictionary, Dr. Carter discovers another definition of the word raptor: a bird of prey.
Dr. Carter’s research doesn’t bring her closer to clarity because she can’t see what’s happening on the distant island. Still, her dictionary reading associates the idea of the park’s raptors—which symbolize the uncontrollable, irrepressible power of nature—with danger long before the book introduces the dinosaurs themselves.
Themes
