113 pages • 3 hours read
Michael CrichtonJurassic Park
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Clashing of Past and Present
Jurassic Park is a clashing of past and present. This motif is a constant presence in the novel, and it is this very collision of opposites that leads Hammond’s dream to ruin. He and his team of researchers have cloned extinct animals from tens of millions of years in the past \and fail to realize that dinosaurs do not live on the modern earth for many reasons. First, they cannot thrive in an environment with a much lower oxygen content in the air. Second, they are prone to diseases of the present which did not exist in their time. Third, dinosaurs are a completely foreign type of animal which humans cannot hope to comprehend. Grant realizes that, in a twist of irony concerning an old debate, dinosaurs are neither lizards nor birds; instead, they are entirely their own. All of these problems prove to be true as dinosaurs regularly fall ill with strange symptoms and die, and perhaps more importantly, the dinosaurs do not interact well with humans. From the moment that the power is out, the dinosaurs begin wreaking havoc on the park and its occupants, including each other. People are eaten, injured, and traumatized by the horrors they witness. Dinosaurs and humans are not meant to mix.
Malcolm is acutely aware of why the mixing of the distant past with the modern world is a terrible idea. Grant, while he is aware of this fact, is swept up in the majesty of seeing his lifelong passion come to life and spends more time marveling at the dinosaurs than worrying about whether they should be there or not. Hammond is in utter denial that his creations are a problem and remains that way until his gruesome death. Dr. Wu does not realize his error until he is standing in the control room pondering the unpredictable nature of ancient creatures’ behavior: “[He was] dealing with something out of the past, something constructed of ancient materials and following ancient rules. [He] couldn’t be certain why it worked as it did; and it had been repaired and modified many times already, by forces of evolution, over eons of time” (374). Moments later, he is mauled. Malcolm comes back to the park to see his theory proven, knowing full well he could die by doing so. As he sits in the Land Cruiser watching the other vehicle be destroyed by the Tyrannosaurus Rex, he remarks, “You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct” (210).
Fractal Geometry
Fractal geometry plays a key role in Malcolm’s chaos theory, which he coins “The Malcolm Effect” (274). This theory introduces each new iteration with an illustration of an ever-changing fractal shape as it slips towards a state of total disorder. Underneath each fractal is a quote which foreshadows the following iteration’s events: “Inevitably, underlying instabilities begin to appear” (199). Each time it seems as if things are reaching a stable point, they get worse. Malcolm, a chaos mathematician, was asked to assess the park’s likelihood of success before it opened. He predicted that it would run itself into the ground. He was never sure exactly how that would take place, but Malcolm explains that chaotic systems’ exact paths are unpredictable. Only the general results can be predicted. So, while Malcolm knew the park would fail, he could not have predicted the power outages or his own death. However, none of these things surprise him, and even as he knows he is about to die, he smiles knowing that his death proves his theory correct.
Malcolm explains that fractal geometry explains both events and objects, and everything that fractal geometry describes shares one common trait: the given object, event, or system will have the same form regardless of size. For example, a rock on a mountainside will have the same basic form as the mountain itself, and a person’s “whole life has the same shape as a single day” (190). Similarly, Jurassic Park has the same shape as the world that it exists in. It is the result of human arrogance and desire for immortality through achievement, and similar words can be said about the state of the earth itself as humans ravage it for resources and land. Malcolm sees the futility in this and understands that if the human species “is gone tomorrow, earth will not miss us” (413). Humans tend to believe they can discover or control anything if given enough time and the foundational knowledge to know where to seek the answers. However, Malcolm knows that humans are foolish to believe this because “life finds a way” (179). No matter how hard humans try to control nature, they will never succeed.
Life as a Theme Park
A consistent motif throughout Jurassic Park is the image of the theme park. Hammond’s dream is to design an amusement park that goes beyond all others and attracts the richest possible customers. He sees that, in other realms of science, there is a responsibility and morality which do not apply to the world of entertainment. A good show can charge whatever price is desired without guilt or accusations of extortion. Hammond wants to see the smiling faces of children as they marvel at a world long extinct—but he wants those children to be rich. In the end, as he lays dying, he only regrets inviting his grandchildren because they are an inconvenience, not because they are in danger: “He should never have brought those kids. They had been nothing but trouble from the beginning. Nobody wanted them around” (430). Nothing, not even his own kin or inching closer to death, breaks Hammond’s delusion of grandeur.
Arnold, the park engineer, worked in the military creating missiles for submarines. After that, he was hired by Disney to create attractions for its amusement parks. Arnold thus has a background in theme park production and sees Jurassic Park as just another one of the same. Furthermore, Arnold’s “continuous employment had eventually given him a somewhat skewed view of reality” (155), and he sees the world as one big theme park. Cities such as Paris are no more than massive tourist attractions designed to draw and entertain consumers for a profit. Arnold’s treatment of Jurassic Park as a theme park creates problems for the visitors almost from the moment they arrive. The Land Cruisers that they board to take the park tour are engineered to follow a track and only move in one direction; they also have no gas power at all. When the power goes out because of Nedry, the visitors are stranded right in front of the Tyrannosaurus enclosure. It causes the splitting of the group and also starts the chain effect which leads to Malcolm’s death after he is bitten and tossed by the massive dinosaur. This attitude of life as a theme park also means that the dinosaurs are seen and treated more as attractions than as living creatures worthy of respect and dignity. None of the park employees possesses any level of empathy for the dinosaurs they create and house. Arnold’s interpretation of life as a theme park also illustrates the novel’s allegory: the idea that humans treat the earth in much the same way as Hammond and his crew treat the park.
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