Jurassic
Park
Grant realizes that if dinosaurs can be cloned, his field of
study will change instantly. The paleontological study of dinosaurs
will end. The big puzzle for Grant is where the researchers
got dinosaur DNA from. As Grant and Ellie get their first glimpse
of the park, Regis says that the foliage in the park has been
selected to give a prehistoric atmosphere. Ellie notices that
one of the ferns at the side of the swimming pool is poisonous,
and she thinks that the designers of the park have not been
as careful as they should have been. Inside their accommodations,
Grant and Ellie notice that the doors are steel-clad and there
are heavy bars on the skylight.
When Dinosaurs
Ruled the Earth
They all meet in the visitor building. Gennaro tells them they
are about to tour the park. He asks them to assess whether the
park is safe for visitors. He mentions the many incidents of
lizard bites in the villages, and shows graphs that indicate
an unusual pattern of infant mortality in the towns on the western
coasts of Costa Rica. The Public Health Service in San José
suspects that something is affecting these figures that is not
being reported by the workers in the coastal villages. Malcolm
immediately explains it by saying that the animals have likely
gotten off the island, although he also says that this is not
the explanation for the unusual statistics. He explains that
it is not possible to create an isolated environment as the
park designers wish. Nature cannot be controlled in this way.
The meeting is interrupted by the arrival of Hammond’s
two grandchildren, eleven-year-old Tim and seven- or eight-year-old
Lex.
The Tour
Tim recognizes Grant, since Grant is the author of one of his
favorite books, The Lost World of the Dinosaurs. He knows that
Grant is one of the principal advocates of the theory that dinosaurs
were warm-blooded. Tim tells Grant about the dinosaur skeletons
he saw at the Museum of Natural History. He has no idea of what
the island is for; his mother has told him it is just a normal
resort.
Ed Regis, the public relations director for Jurassic Park, is
their guide for the tour. They visit the laboratory, where Henry
Wu, the chief geneticist at Jurassic Park, explains where they
get dinosaur DNA. It comes from amber—the fossilized resin
of prehistoric tree sap. The amber trapped and preserved insects
which had fed on dinosaur blood. The blood then yields the DNA.
Next, the researchers use powerful computers to identify the
DNA they have extracted. The visitors go into another room and
Wu shows them on a computer screen the structure of a small
fragment of dinosaur DNA. The computer provides information
about what is missing in each fragment, and the researchers
are then able to repair it.
Nedry, the computer expert who created the park control system
but he was not told what the park was for, is bored by the tour.
Tim also becomes impatient with all the technical language.
They go into another laboratory where Lex and Ellie also become
bored. Their next stop is the hatchery, where the dinosaur eggs
are hatched. The eggs all lie on a table and are moving gently.
The survival rate of the baby dinosaurs is only four percent,
but the researchers are aiming to improve that. Then the visitors
are shown the nursery, where the newborns are. They examine
a baby raptor, the size of a small monkey. Wu tells them that
none of the animals can breed, which is why the park has the
nursery. The animals are sterile and they are all female.
Control
On being questioned by Malcolm, Wu admits that they have made
a large number of procompsognathids (compys). They are useful
because they eat the excrement of the other animals. Wu insists
that it could not have been one of the compys that bit Tina,
the little American girl. He says the dinosaurs have been engineered
to be dependent on a certain amino acid that they would be unable
to obtain in the outside world, but which they are supplied
with at Jurassic Park.
As they are about to enter the control room, they catch sight
on the monitors of a supply boat docking, and they have to wait.
Regis tells them they will not see the full-grown raptors on
the tour, because they are still confined to the holding pen.
Grant discusses raptors with Tim. Grant says they are quick,
strong and probably intelligent. As the group walks down a dirt
path, three raptors, safely confined behind a fence, try to
attack them. They are repelled by the electric fence. Grant
is astonished at how fast the animals are.
Version 4.4
Wu talks with Hammond in Hammond’s living room. Wu wants
to replace all the current stock of animals with newly created
ones. He wants to breed slower, more domesticated dinosaurs,
because he think that is what people expect to see. But Hammond
is happy with things as they are and does not listen. While
Hammond speaks on the phone, Wu reflects on his dissatisfactions.
He feels his expertise and his achievements should be rewarded
with more influence, but he realizes that the work is virtually
done and Hammond does not need him any more.
Control
Grant and his companions finally enter the control room. The
chief engineer, John Arnold, boasts about all the sophisticated
control mechanisms they have to track where the animals are
in the park. Motion sensors cover ninety-two percent of the
park area. Gennaro questions him about the security of the control
system, and Arnold insists it is impregnable. Gennaro is convinced
that everything is safe, but Malcolm insists that he knows for
certain that animals have escaped, although Gennaro does not
understand Malcolm’s reasoning.
The Tour
Grant’s party gets into two electric Land Cruisers and
the tour begins. They pass through a grove of palm trees and
a few minutes later see some small dinosaurs, called othnielia,
in trees, and some hypsiophodonts, which are lizards. Then they
move on to see the larger dinosaurs.
Control
Back in the control room, Arnold is worried about all the details.
He is unhappy with the progress that still has to be made before
the park officially opens. He lists all the potential problems
regarding control of the animals, but Hammond gets impatient
with him and will not listen. There are also bugs in the computer
system. On the tour, the visitors now see a dilophosaurus, which
is ten feet tall and poisonous. They then pass more herbivores,
triceratops serratus, who weigh about seven tons each but are
docile.
Big Rex
The tour party is anxious to see a tyrannosaurus rex. A goat
is placed in a field and they wait. In the control room, Hammond
and Muldoon, the game warden, watch. Muldoon is fully aware
of how dangerous the animals are, and has requisitioned laser-guided
missile launchers to deal with an emergency. The tyrannosaurus
rex appears and devours the goat.
Control
Wu and Hammond agree the park is safe, but Hammond is worried
that Gennaro may try to get them shut down. Muldoon fetches
a Shoulder Launcher and two rockets from the basement store.
The Land Cruisers stop at a swamp, where the visitors observe
the largest dinosaurs, commonly known as brontosaurus, which
weigh more than thirty tons. Tim thinks he also sees a raptor,
but Regis tells him it could not have been. A storm is brewing
and the cargo vessel at the dock requests permission to leave,
even though it has not finished unloading. If it does not leave,
the ship will be pounded against the dock by the storm.
Stegosaur
The visitors in the Land Cruisers stare at a stegosaur. Dr.
Harding, the vet, is anaesthetizing the animal, which is sick.
The visitors get out to take a look. Ellie figures out that
the stegosaurs get sick because they are eating poisonous berries.
Malcolm continues to tell Gennaro about chaos theory, and why
the park animals will behave in an unpredictable manner. Grant
finds a velociraptor egg, which disproves the notion that the
dinosaurs on the island cannot breed.
Control
Hammond says the egg must be a bird egg. But at the insistence
of Malcolm, Arnold tries different ways of counting the animals
on the computer. The count reveals that there are 292 animals
in the park, much higher than the official figure of 238. Malcolm
concludes that the animals, including the deadly velociraptor,
are breeding. Wu cannot believe it, because all the dinosaurs
are female.
Breeding Sites
Grant tells Wu that they must find the dinosaur nests. He also
says he thinks he knows how the animals are able to breed, even
though they are all female. Malcolm explains more of his theories
to Grant. He is concerned that they are now at a very dangerous
point. Tim and Lex spot three juvenile raptors on the supply
boat that is heading for the mainland. They try to call the
control room so that they can recall the boat, but their radios
are not working. It turns out that Nedry is using all the telephone
lines for some data transmission. Then there is a power outage
in the park. All the floodlights go out and the road is in darkness.
The power in the buildings remains on, however. Arnold in the
control room tries to find Nedry to fix the problem, but he
is gone. It transpires that Nedry is the man who is working
for Dodgson of Biosyn. He goes into the fertilization lab and
steals two frozen embryos of each of four dinosaur species.
He uses his knowledge of the security system to cover his tracks.
He then takes a Jeep from the underground garage and drives
off into the park. In the control room, Arnold realizes that
the electrical fences are no longer active, which means that
the animals can get out.
Analysis
There is
a lot of scientific talk in the “Jurassic Park”
chapter about the changing ideas of scholars as to what dinosaurs
were like, whether they were cold-blooded or warm-blooded, whether
they were fast or slow, whether there was a possibility that
they could be cloned. When Crichton discusses known scientific
developments like this, he is sure of his facts and he wants
the reader to believe them.
However, for the sake of the excitement of the story, Crichton
also invented certain elements and applied them to his dinosaurs
in the park. He has often emphasized in interviews that Jurassic
Park is a “fantasy,” and should not be considered
to represent scientific truth in every aspect of the story.
For example, the idea that dinosaurs could be cloned from the
remnants of DNA left fossilized in insects trapped in amber
(first discussed in this section, on p. 101), is not something
that scientists believe is a realistic possibility (in the novel,
not even Grant had thought of the possibility).
Two more
examples of Crichton’s flights of imaginations have occurred
already. The first was when Grant and Ellie found intact, full-body
fossils in a fossil bed in Montana. The truth is that most fossil
beds produce only a jumbled collection of bones. Sometimes it
is impossible to know if the bones belong to the same creature,
or what that creature might be. The second example is when on
the tour, the visitors see a dilophosaurus, which is supposedly
able to spit poison. But there is no fossil evidence to support
the idea that the dilophosaurus could spit. (These examples
are taken from the Academy of Sciences website, http://www.calacademy.org/casnews/oct96/feature1.htm)
The genre of the suspense thriller is different from the mystery
genre, but Crichton does not scorn the chance to create an old-fashioned
mystery when he has the opportunity. The mystery is over the
identity of the InGen employee who is going to steal the frozen
embryos. In the chapter, “Version 4.4,” it is emphasized
how dissatisfied Wu is, because Hammond no longer listens to
him. This is a hint that Wu may be the culprit, but of course
this turns not to be so when, eight chapters later, the thief
is revealed as Nedry. Like all good mystery writers, Crichton
inserts a red herring (a red herring is something used to confuse,
to divert attention from something else) to add just that little
bit more interest for the reader.
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