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
Grant’s expertise in the breeding and nesting habits of dinosaurs allows him to postulate that the island boasts seven breeding sites, based on the numbers: two each for the raptors and compys and one each for the other three species. He further hypothesizes that bigger breeding animals have produced fewer young due to predation by the loose raptors and compys. No one has witnessed the wild raptors because they hunt nocturnally. Wu admits that the island initially had a large rodent population which has drastically shrunk over time—suggesting a food source for wild roaming dinosaurs—although no one ever investigated why.
It turns out that park operators had ample evidence of uncounted animals (the crashing population of native rodents, for instance), but they ignored it. Their assurance in their mistaken beliefs—that they controlled nature in the park, that their technology was foolproof, that the dinosaurs they wanted to see were the only ones there—allowed them to ignore and deny inconvenient evidence.
Themes
As to the question of how the all-female dinosaurs became capable of breeding, Grant asks whether the geneticists filled in any gaps in the dinosaur DNA with frog DNA. Wu volunteers to check the records. To start figuring out how many dinosaurs may have escaped, Grant suggests surveying the nesting sites to estimate the number of hatched animals, then comparing this to the census of animals on the island.
Grant’s ability to rapidly form a hypothesis suggests the existence of readily available information that Wu could or should have looked at.
Themes
The visitors prepare to split up. Ellie will stay with Dr. Harding to finish documenting the stegosaurus’s symptoms. Gennaro volunteers to join them. Malcolm and Grant prepare to return to the visitor center in the second vehicle, while Regis, Tim and Lex climb into the front car. To assuage Tim’s frustration at not being allowed to ride with Malcolm and Grant, Regis shows him how to operate the car’s night-vision goggles.
By handing Tim the night-vision goggles, allowing him to literally see through the gathering gloom of the evening and the storm, Regis reinforces the book’s idea that pretty much anyone—even children—has better insight into the park than its tunnel-visioned operators.
Themes
On the ride back, Grant expects Malcolm to feel vindicated, since events have proven his predictions. Instead, Malcolm admits fear. Mathematical theories show a sameness of things across different scales, he explains. And instead of demonstrating a linear quality, accident and unpredictability tend to rule human lives. People might not want to accept a series of wholly unpredictable encounters as life, but that’s the case. The sound of the children shouting over the intercom interrupts their conversation. Having caught a glimpse of the departing supply ship through his binoculars, Tim swears he saw a stowaway dinosaur on deck. The sea spray and gathering dust make it hard to see. But eventually, Grant confirms Tim’s sighting of at least two juvenile raptors.
Malcolm’s fear reminds readers that, for him and the others, the park isn’t some mental exercise. The oversight and hubris of park planners and operators poses a real risk to their safety and even their lives. The dinosaur breeding proves that humans have far less control over chaotic and unpredictable nature than men like Hammond and Wu want to believe. And right on cue, another sign of this powerlessness appears in the form of raptors—the deadliest of the park’s animals and the ones that most clearly represent the power of nature to evade human control—on their way to wreak havoc on the mainland.
Themes
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In the control room, Hammond, Arnold, and Muldoon saw the Land Cruisers stop, but they can’t communicate with the guests via radio, possibly due to electrical interference from an approaching storm. When Arnold picks up the phone to call down to the dining room, he discovers that Nedry’s data transfer has commandeered all the park’s phone lines—both internal and external. Nedry apologizes, then stands up to get his own drink.
Again, the broken lines of communication between the control room and the park guests prove how little control park operators have, even within the carefully designed and delimited world of Jurassic Park. Their inability to maintain control of the human-designed technological systems doesn’t inspire confidence about their ability to control nature.
Themes
On the tour, Grant asks Regis how long the ship takes to reach the mainland. They have 18 hours to raise a warning, but they discover they can’t reach the control room or raise Dr. Harding on the walkie-talkie. They’re about 17 minutes from the base when the lights abruptly turn off and the cars—controlled by electrical tracks in the road—come to a halt.
In the tour vehicles, Grant, Malcolm, Regis, and the children are at the complete mercy of the park’s operators, totally dependent on the park systems running as intended. This makes them vulnerable to chaos in the form of unexpected events, like the power cutting out.
Themes
In the control room, Arnold realizes that, although the visitor center has electricity, the electrical grid on the island’s perimeter has lost power. The vehicles, somewhere around the tyrannosaur paddock, must have stopped. He picks up a phone to call maintenance only to remember that Nedry has clogged up all the lines.
When Nedry cuts the power to the island’s perimeter to facilitate his theft of InGen’s dinosaur embryos, he dramatically demonstrates one of the dangers of the park operators’ decision to consolidate operations into one massive automated system: any blip can start a disastrous cascade of events.
Themes
With the perimeter power out, all the security-card locks are disarmed. Nedry knew this would happen; he built secret entrances into his programming partly as a failsafe if someone locked up the system, partly to feed his ego. And then, when he became annoyed with InGen for demanding free, extensive modifications late in the project via a sort of corporate blackmail, the trapdoors became an insurance policy. Thus, when Lewis Dodgson approached him about stealing dinosaur embryos, he had both the motive and the opportunity. In the Fertilization Room, he stashes frozen embryos in his shaving cream can device. Then he goes to the basement, climbs into the remaining gas-powered Jeep, and heads for the dock.
Human character flaws lie at the heart of the event that begins the destruction of Jurassic Park: Hammond and InGen abused Nedry’s contract out of greed and their desire to save as much money on park construction as possible; in turn, Nedry’s pride in his own abilities and his greedy desire for wealth motivated him to help Dodgson. And, in turning off the park’s systems, he endangers everyone, demonstrating a selfish disregard for the lives and safety of others.
Themes
In the control room, Arnold swears, causing Muldoon to turn, just missing seeing Nedry driving away in the Jeep. Arnold has realized that, in turning off the security system, Nedry has also disengaged the electric fences. Maybe nothing will happen; most of the animals have been shocked by the fences, and conventional wisdom says they probably won’t test their luck. Still, Muldoon decides to head out in the Jeep to collect the visitors before they do something stupid like leave the cars. When the power comes back on, the vehicles will restart automatically regardless of whether they are occupied or not. Congratulating himself on the foresight he showed by putting the rocket launcher in the Jeep already, Muldoon enters the garage to find the vehicle missing.
With the disengagement of the park’s enclosure fences, the biggest test of humans’ ability to predict and control nature begins. They don’t know how the dinosaurs will react—whether external stimuli can modify their behavior, or even if some of them possess enough intelligence to recognize and capitalize on their opportunity to escape. Arnold hopes the dinosaurs will behave like modern animals which, having been shocked, would learn to avoid the fences. Muldoon on the other hand, worries about unpredictable behavior on the part of the dinosaurs or the humans. And he gets evidence for this almost immediately when he sees that Nedry has unexpectedly stolen the Jeep.
Themes
