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 Murphy feels anxious watching his grandfather (Hammond) argue with Gennaro. He and his sister Alexis (“Lex”) argue about who must introduce themself first until Ed Regis steps in. Tim forms chaotic impressions of the assembled experts until he realizes that he recognizes Dr. Alan Grant as the author of one of his favorite books, Lost World of the Dinosaurs. As the tour begins, Grant falls into step with Tim, asking him about his interest in dinosaurs.
Tim’s first impressions of the group reinforce Malcolm’s insistent reminders about how increasing variables push a system toward chaos: the clash of personalities among the adults does indeed create instability. It’s fitting, then, that Tim locates solid ground in the figure of Grant, who represents in part the slow and steady progress of traditional academic science.
Themes
Tim tells Grant that he likes to visit natural history museums to look at the fossils when he can convince his family to go. He remembers his last trip, on which he argued with his dad about the relative size and age of various specimens. Then, Tim pointed out that the tyrannosaur skeleton had too many vertebrae. His father didn’t believe him until a security guard confirmed it. Grant likes the story, in part because he recognizes the incorrect skeleton Tim describes, having seen it himself at one point.
Like Grant, Tim is a careful observer and correct interpreter of the things he sees. The incorrect skeleton warns against humans playing god: if it’s this hard to assemble a fossil, how much harder must it be to correctly put together a living creature? And the episode provides a miniature version of the island visit, during which Hammond openly argues with or denies his exerts’ observations and predictions. It remains to be seen whether he, like Tim’s father, will humbly admit his mistakes or not.
Themes
Ed Regis, for his part, resents having to babysit Hammond’s grandchildren. He’s the head of public relations for the park, and he has too much to do to prepare for its public opening in a year’s time. And maintaining strict secrecy until closer to opening makes his job even harder. He doesn’t feel respected in his work, like he’s always being given the odd, unwanted tasks like taking care of injured workers and small children.
Ed Regis’s plight points toward the expense-cutting corners park management take, including stretching their small workforce to the breaking point. His internal griping also offers a pointed reminder that the park is a commercial endeavor first, and a scientific one second. This raises questions about the reasons for which biotech firms develop their technologies.
Themes
The tour passes the control room, where Regis boasts that the maximally automated park can run on a skeleton crew. Inside, they see the chief engineer, John Arnold, and park warden, Robert Muldoon. Next up they visit the genetics lab, run by Dr. Henry Wu. Wu explains that, while scientists can extract DNA from ground-up dinosaur bones, the park uses a proprietary process to extract it from the blood of parasitic insects preserved in amber. Then, they analyze the DNA using the park’s supercomputers and gene sequencers. These use advanced software to predict and fill in any gaps in the genetic code.
Hammond relies on automation to run the park partly to save money on staffing (as he previously discussed with Gennaro), and partly due to his unwavering belief in humanity’s ability to control the world around them through technological advancement. Wu shares Hammond’s confidence, even using computers to fill in pieces of dinosaur DNA that have been lost to time. But each prediction introduces another variable, which the park creators should—but do not—account for.
Themes
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Dennis Nedry, the computer systems analyst, finds Wu’s lecture boring. Although InGen proved very cagy about the details of the work they asked him to do, the sheer size of the project suggested that they were sequencing genomes, so he’s not surprised. Given the size and complexity of what InGen wanted him to do, he’s also not surprised that the system has bugs. But Arnold’s and Hammond’s concern over this state of affairs annoys him.
Nedry’s reflections on the Jurassic Park computer system seem to prove Malcolm’s assertions that any large, complex system will be full of unpredictable variables (or “bugs” in computer terms). But he’s more like Hammond than Malcolm in his belief that these represent a simple nuisance rather than the potential for danger.
Themes
In the Fertilization Room, Wu explains how technicians replace the DNA in unfertilized crocodile eggs to grow dinosaurs. Their work involves the use of lethal poisons to interrupt cellular division. The tour moves on to the Hatchery Room, where the ambient atmosphere recreates Jurassic conditions: 99-degree heat, 100% humidity, and a higher oxygen concentration than modern air. Technicians babysit and attend to hundreds of eggs. Only about 4% of hatched dinosaurs survive, in part because so many variables can affect each embryo’s development. Some of the dinosaurs about to hatch belong to a mystery species; without a positive identification the geneticists can only guess until the first batch starts to hatch.
While the ability to control Hatchery Room’s atmosphere through climate control technologies suggests humans’ ability to control the world around them, atmospheric changes of millennia also point to the incredible changes that have occurred over the history of the earth. The low hatchling survival rate also provides evidence for the instability of natural systems, with their innumerable, uncontrollable variables. Not knowing what species will hatch from a strand of newly recovered DNA provides the clearest example of this natural unpredictability.
Themes
Finally, the group arrives in the nursery, where a technician tends to a baby velociraptor. The small yellow and brown creature jumps into Tim’s arms. Both Wu and the tech assure everyone that the baby is harmless—it doesn’t even have egg teeth. In the lab, techs must help the raptors break free from their shell. Grant wants to know how the babies hatch in the wild, but Wu explains that technicians hatch all dinosaurs in the lab. By withholding certain hormones during embryonic development, he has engineered exclusively female animals. In addition, they use large doses of radiation to sterilize the dinosaurs. None of them can reproduce.
Grant rose to prominence as a paleontologist by hypothesizing that dinosaurs actively cared for their young, unlike modern reptiles. The help the baby raptors need when they hatch confirms his theory. And it suggests that at least some of these animals exhibit unanticipated social behavior. Wu makes modifications to the dinosaur stock to prevent them from breeding in the wild in the park’s most pointed exercise of control over nature.
Themes
Grant wants to look at the baby raptor, which Tim willingly hands over. But Grant handles the creature callously, stressing it and causing it to scream. Regis intervenes, forcing Grant to relinquish the juvenile. He explains that the fragile infant dinosaurs tend to die of stress. Additionally, the park wants to treat the dinosaurs as “humanely” as possible. When Grant can’t help himself and tries to approach the dinosaur again, she snaps her jaws and hisses at him with “sudden intense fury.”
Grant usually works with fossils of animals that have been dead for millions of years; his bumbling attempt to handle the baby dinosaur offers a pointed reminder that these dinosaurs are anything but lifeless specimens. With her own instincts and behavior, the dinosaur makes it clear that she will defend herself if necessary.
Themes
