The
Main Road
It is raining hard. Since the power is off, the visitors are
stuck in their Land Cruisers. Tim is the first to see the tyrannosaur,
looking over the fence at the vehicles. The tyrannosaur roars,
and Regis is so frightened he gets out of the vehicle and runs
away. Tim realizes that the fence is no longer electrified.
The dinosaur pulls free of the fence and stands between the
cars. Then it bangs on the hood, shattering the windshield.
It bites the spare tire on the back of the Land Cruiser, and
then comes close to Tim’s face, through the windshield.
Then it turns the Cruiser on its side. The dinosaur lifts the
car, and Lex falls out. The car rests high in a palm tree as
the animal lets go of it. Malcolm tries to escape from the other
car, but he does not get far before the dinosaur tosses him
into the air. Grant gets out of the car, facing the dinosaur.
But Grant keeps absolutely still and the dinosaur fails to see
him. The dinosaur kicks the car over and Grant flies through
the air.
Return
Harding, Gennaro and Ellie, out in the park in a Jeep, are forced
to turn back because a tree blocks their path. Back in the control
room, Arnold frets about the whereabouts of Nedry. He knows
that Nedry has meddled with the control system.
Nedry
Nedry heads for the east dock to deliver the embryos to Dodgson’s
boat. The storm rages. He takes a wrong turn. Getting out of
the Jeep to find out where he is, he discovers that he is at
the jungle river. He decides to abandon his plan and return
to the control room. But before he can get back into the car
he encounters a ten-foot-tall dinosaur which spits at him. The
spit is poisonous. Having blinded its prey, the animal attacks
and kills him.
Bungalow
In Hammond’s bungalow, Wu realizes that Hammond is refusing
to face up to the situation that is unfolding in the park. Hammond
keeps insisting that children are going to love it. He speaks
of plans for more Jurassic Parks in other parts of the world
and expects the company to make twenty billion dollars a year.
And he insists that he owns the island and no one can stop him
from opening the park. Meanwhile, Harding and Ellie are near
the jungle river, where they see compys gathering, attracted
by the smell of a dying animal. They decide to go and investigate.
Tim
Tim lies in the Land Cruiser, slowly drifting back to consciousness.
The car is lodged in the tree, twenty feet above the ground.
He manages to open a door and wriggle out of the car. He slides
down a few feet and then falls the remaining twelve feet to
the ground. He gets to his feet and tosses a rock to ward off
a stegosaur. There is no sign of Grant or Malcolm and he wonders
where everyone has gone. Meanwhile, Wu enters the fertilization
room and notes that someone had been in the freezer within the
last thirty minutes. He also does some work on the computer
and realizes that all the dinosaurs have some frog DNA. He suspects
this is why they are able to breed, but he does not understand
how it happens.
Lex
Tim finds Lex unhurt, curled up in a drainage pipe. Then he
sees with relief Grant approaching them. Regis, who has been
hiding, now realizes that the dinosaur has gone and that the
other people are probably alive. He is ashamed of having run
away. Meanwhile, Grant decides that the safest thing to do is
remain with the kids until help arrives. They watch as Regis
is attacked and killed by the juvenile tyrannosaur.
Control
Harding and Ellie return to the Safari Lodge. In the control
room, Hammond yells at Arnold to get the park under control.
Arnold does not understand the system as well as Nedry, so it
is going to be a tough job. He has to examine the computer code.
The Road
Muldoon and Gennaro take the Jeep into the park to look for
the Land Cruisers. They find Regis’s severed leg lying
at the side of the road. They reach the wrecked Land Cruisers,
and Muldoon thinks it likely the children are dead. But then
he finds a watch and reasons that one of the children took it
off after the dinosaur attack. Then they find the badly injured
Malcolm and carry him back to the Jeep and take him back to
the hotel.
Control
Hammond still tries to minimize the unfolding catastrophe.
Meanwhile, Arnold has figured out that Nedry has meddled with
the computer code. He tries to trace the steps Nedry took. Arnold
finds that Nedry turned off the safety systems, and that he
also inserted a command into the system that gave him complete
access to every area of the park by linking the perimeter and
security systems and switching them off. Muldoon breaks the
bad news about Malcolm to Ellie, and says she must help take
care of him. They cannot call out for a doctor, so they must
make do with Harding, the vet.
In the Park
Grant, Tim and Lex enter the forest by moonlight. They climb
a fence and then find themselves standing waist-deep in water
at the bottom of the moat. They climb up the embankment to a
service road that leads to a maintenance building. They enter
the building and fall asleep on the hay.
Control
Arnold finally finds a way to restore the original computer
code. The lights go on, and the electrified fences are working
again. The motion sensors are working again too. Muldoon takes
the maintenance crews out to repair the broken fences and get
the animals back into their paddocks. Malcolm’s condition
seems to be improving, and he explains to Ellie and Gennaro
how the dinosaur attacked him.
The Park
Muldoon and his crew set to work on the fences, and Arnold is
happy that the park is almost back to normal. He explains to
Gennaro why he disagrees with the chaos theory that Malcolm
advocates. He thinks that instability is essential to all living
systems, and indicates that the system is healthy and responsive.
Meanwhile, Harding has recaptured a small dryosaur by tranquilizing
it, and prepares to take her back to her paddock. Arnold reports
that the tyrannosaur went into the sauropod paddock, but Muldoon
refuses to go in there until daylight. Hammond insists that
he goes in that night, but still Muldoon refuses. He says there
is no equipment strong enough to tranquilize the animal.
Dawn
Grant awakes. It is near dawn. He finds Lex feeding hay to an
infant triceratops. Its mother appears and they both walk off
into the fields. Grant and the children leave the building,
and walk past a peaceful scene near a lagoon. In the distance
they hear the roar of a large animal. Back in the control room,
Arnold is still unable to get the phone lines working. He knows
that Nedry deliberately jammed them. He reluctantly decides
to shut down the system and restart it, but he is not certain
that everything will come back on. In the park, Grant and the
children run as a tyrannosaur attacks a herd of hadrosaurs.
Arnold switches the main power back on, and works to switch
everything on again manually. The hadrosaurs charge in the direction
of Grant and the children. They run to escape, and climb a tree.
The Park
Grant studies the hadrosaurs, one of which come up close to
him as he watches from the tree. After the hadrosaur moves away,
Grant, Tim and Lex descend from the tree. They go to towards
the dock at the edge of the lagoon, hoping to find a raft there.
Their aim is to take it down the river, hoping to quickly cover
the eight miles back to the hotel, where they need to raise
the alarm about the boat heading for the mainland with the baby
raptors on board. But before they get to the raft they see the
tyrannosaur only twenty yards away. The animal is asleep, and
the humans go past it to the raft and set off in the lagoon.
The dinosaur wakes and comes after them, swimming in the lagoon.
But it turns back when it sees the juvenile tyrannosaur on the
shore, crouched over a dead sauropod that the adult tyrannosaur
had killed.
Analysis
Having
created the groundwork for the novel in the preceding sections,
Crichton now begins to quicken the pace. Adventures follow one
after another at a fast pace, and the ongoing themes of the
vulnerability of high-tech computer equipment and the danger
of irresponsible genetic engineering continue to gather strength.
This section provides another example of Crichton’s willingness
to invent details for which there is no scientific basis. Grant
manages to save himself from the tyrannosaur by standing completely
still, realizing that the animal can only see objects when they
are in motion. As the Academy of Sciences website states, “There
is no fossil evidence to suggest that the T. rex relied on movement
to locate its prey” (http://www.calacademy.org/casnews/oct96/feature1.htm).
Crichton invents the detail because it helps him create intense
drama and suspense—the tyrannosaur can get very close
to Grant, and yet he can still escape. Crichton uses the idea
again in describing Ed Regis’s death. Regis makes the
fatal mistake of waving his arms to ward the dinosaur off. His
movements seal his fate.
Pointing out these inventions is not to criticize Crichton.
He is writing a novel, not a scientific paper, and there is
no reason at all why he cannot invent whatever details he likes,
as long as they are convincing in the context of the story,
and most readers would agree that they are.
This section is also notable for the way Crichton points out
the dangers of a reckless alliance between business and science.
The chapter “Bungalow” makes it clear that Hammond
created the park for the money he could make from it. He eagerly
looks forward to making twenty billion dollars a year. When
this level of greed is allied to scientists who pursue their
work without considering ethical or safety questions, the results
may be disastrous.
|
Studyhall
