Destroying
the World
Malcolm and Hammond engage in an argument. Hammond is relieved
that the animals did not get free and overrun the world. Malcolm
says that the world cannot be destroyed. It will always survive
whatever disasters take place. If humanity destroys itself,
the earth will not miss us.
Under Control
The park seems finally to have been brought under control. There
are now fewer animals, because some have been killed by other
animals. Since the fences were down for so long, all the animals
have mingled. Grant and Muldoon decide to search for the animal
nests, especially the raptor nests. They have to account for
every animal born on the island before they allow the Costa
Rican National Guard to destroy the entire place. They find
some grenades in an unmarked storeroom and set off. Grant explains
the mystery of how the dinosaurs were able to breed. Under certain
conditions frogs can change sex, and the dinosaurs all have
frog DNA. Grant, Ellie and Gennaro discover the raptor nest.
Grant slips down into the hole.
Almost Paradigm
Malcolm is lapsing into a coma, and Hammond blames everyone
else for the failures of the park. As he walks to his bungalow,
he is surprised by a juvenile tyrannosaur. He runs away but
falls down a hillside and ends up lying face down in a stream.
His right ankle appears to be broken. He is only a hundred yards
from his bungalow, and he shouts for help. Meanwhile, Malcolm
has become delirious, his fever is higher, and the supply of
antibiotics is about to run out.
Descent
Ellie and Gennaro join Grant in the dinosaur nest and hide behind
some boxes. They see two adult raptors and some babies. Grant
guesses there are at least thirty raptors in the nest, including
four or six adults. He examines the first nest and counts the
remains of fourteen eggs. After examining two more nests, he
concludes that thirty-four raptors have been born. Ellie notes
that when the raptors stand still, they all face a certain direction.
She wonders whether it is ritual behavior. Grant thinks it may
be a form of communication.
Hammond
Hammond has been trying for an hour to climb the hill, but he
is still only one-third of the way up. He is tired, dizzy and
in pain. He sees some compys approaching—the scavengers.
Hammond throws rocks to ward them off, which only works for
a while. The compys soon attack him, poisoning him with their
bites. The poison acts as a narcotic, and Hammond feels relaxed
and peaceful as he dies.
The Beach
At the nest’s exit, Grant and the others observe the raptors
on the edge of a swamp, near the beach that looks out onto the
Pacific Ocean. They are all lined up together, staring south.
A ship appears from the south and the animals watch it. Grant
observes how they all behave as a group, and decides that they
are organized around a matriarchal pecking order. He concludes
that they are staring at the ocean because they want to migrate.
Approaching Dark
Grant, Ellie and Gennaro are picked up by a helicopter belonging
to the Costa Rican National Guard. Muldoon and the children
are already in the helicopter. There are several explosions
as the army begins to destroy the island. Grant realizes he
will never know where the dinosaurs would have migrated to.
Epilogue: San José
For several days, Grant is questioned by the authorities. He
is visited by Marty Guitierrez, who found the original specimen
of the procompsognathus. Guitierrez tells Grant of a strange
event in the rural north: some unknown animals ate the crops
and moved each day in a straight line from coast to mountains
to jungle. The animals have not been found. Both Guitierrez
and Grant suspect there may be more.
Analysis
In works of popular
literature such as Jurassic Park, there is usually a moral scheme
operating. The good characters survive, the bad characters often
do not. Good triumphs. In this novel, in addition to the thief
Nedry, the three characters who most exemplify the recklessness
and overconfidence of Jurassic Park all die. These are Hammond,
Wu and Arnold. Hammond was the businessman too intent on making
money to acknowledge the flaws and risks of what he was doing;
Wu was the geneticist who thought he could control and manipulate
the uncontrollable; and Arnold was the engineer who built the
park and who confidently asserted more than once that the park
was under control again when it clearly was not. Their deaths
are symbolic of what the novel encourages us to see as fatal
human attitudes: meddling with genetic structures, rampant desire
for profit, blind faith in computers. Interestingly, in the
movie version of Jurassic Park, it is the lawyer, Gennaro, who
is the first to be killed by a dinosaur—a testament to
the moviemakers’ faith in the eternal unpopularity of
lawyers. Crichton, however, allows Gennaro to live through to
the end.
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