Jurassic park

Fifth Iteration–Epilogue
Summary
Search
Muldoon and Gennaro go out to investigate the hadrosaur stampede. Arnold informs them that he has found Nedry. Once they reach him, they retrieve the rocket launcher and leave Nedry's carcass to the compys, which Gennaro notices have five-fingered hands. Grant and the kids float under the giant dome of the park's aviary.

Arnold monitors the motion sensors but is unable to locate either the t-rex or Grant and the kids. Malcolm claims that a part of his theory, the "Malcolm Effect," indicates that a catastrophic event will happen when it appears the system is working perfectly.
Inside the aviary, Grant and the kids are looking for motion detectors and are attacked by fiercely territorial cearadactyls, large fish-eating pterodactyls. One of them tries to pick up Lex, but Grant fights it off. They escape back to the raft. Unsure what to do when they are confronted by a group of poisonous dilophosaurs by the shore, Grant and company are saved when the t-rex reappears and distracts the dilophosaurs long enough to allow the raft to pass.
Tyrannosaur
Arnold finally locates the t-rex, and Muldoon and Gennaro go to catch it. Muldoon fires two rocket-launched doses of tranquilizer at the tyrannosaur but seems to miss, and they are forced to flee. The t-rex turns around and again chases Grant and the kids, who fall down a waterfall. Lex narrowly escapes the tyrannosaur, nearly drowning in the process. They run behind the waterfall to escape, and Grant finds a maintenance door and enters it, only to be trapped inside. He finds a flashlight, a baby male velociraptor, and an electric go- cart. Outside, the t-rex finds the kids behind the waterfall and starts dragging Tim out with its tongue. Suddenly, the dinosaur keels over.
Control
Arnold reports that the t-rex finally succumbed to its tranquilizer dose, as Muldoon had not missed after all. Just as Arnold is gloating that things are back in order, he notices that the park has been running on its auxiliary power, and that the power has suddenly run out. He realizes there was a mix-up when he shut the power off earlier. Meanwhile, the waterfall stops flowing and the maintenance door opens, releasing Grant.
Back at the control room, Wu reads a printout that indicates that the electric fences have been off for the last five hours. Arnold goes out to try to turn the generator back on, but is killed by a velociraptor. Muldoon and Gennaro narrowly escape the pack of raptors, but Gennaro is attacked by a raptor when he goes back to the generator to try to turn it on again.
Return
Grant and the kids take the go-cart back to the visitor center, which is in shambles. Wu, Harding, Muldoon, Sattler, Hammond, and Malcolm are all trapped in a room at the lodge, as three raptors on the roof of the room slowly bite through the bars of the skylight. Sattler goes outside to distract the raptors while Grant makes a run for the generator, leaving the kids alone in the cafeteria.
Sattler draws the attention of two more raptors, but it turns out that these two are merely distracting her while the raptors on the roof come to attack her from behind. Wu steps outside to warn Sattler what is happening. He is killed by a raptor that jumps from the roof, but Sattler escapes. Grant discovers Gennaro still alive and turns on the generator. A raptor sneaks into the cafeteria but Tim locks it in the freezer. He and Lex flee to the control room and find a radio. Muldoon tells Tim that he must turn on the electricity since none of the people who are still alive knows how to use computers.
The Grid
Tim fiddles with the computer controls, but he and Lex are forced to leave the room when three raptors appear on the balcony. In the hallway, the kids realize that Tim had somehow turned on the electronic door locks, locking them out of every room. They find a security card on a dead guard and use it to open the nearest door.
Lodge
The raptors follow the kids into the nursery. Tim throws the baby raptor at the attacking adults, who tear it to shreds. The kids run into the next room, meeting up with Grant and Gennaro. Grant distracts the raptors while Gennaro takes the kids and runs into the next room, but they are trapped there. Grant lures the raptors into the laboratory, where he kills two of them by feeding them dinosaur eggs that he has injected with poison. He injects the poison directly into the tail of the third raptor with a syringe. After it dies, he and the others run to the control room.
Control
Tim manages to turn the electricity on just in time, and the bars on the skylight now keep the raptors out. The group calls the supply ship that has the stowaway raptors aboard, instructing it to turn around just before it docks into Costa Rica.
Destroying the World
Hammond sighs, relieved that his dinosaurs have not gotten free to overrun the world. Malcolm calls Hammond an egomaniacal idiot for thinking that he could ever be directly responsible for destroying the entire planet. Man will never be able to destroy the planet, he contends.
Under Control
A helicopter and the Costa Rican National Guard are on the way. Grant, Sattler, Muldoon, and a reluctant Gennaro go to find the raptor nest to determine if any animals have gotten off the island. On the way, Grant explains how the dinosaurs were able to reproduce: certain species of frogs can spontaneously change their gender when they are in an environment in which all of the animals are the same sex. The dinosaurs with the frog DNA, therefore, must have retained that trait. Once they are at the raptor nest, Gennaro refuses to go down the nest hole, but Grant says he must own up to his responsibility.
Almost Paradigm
Hammond takes a walk and muses that, even if Gennaro shuts down his island, he still has frozen embryos safely stored in California. Tim and Lex fool around in the control room, playing a recorded tyrannosaur roar over the park's loudspeakers. Hammond hears the roar and, thinking he is about to be attacked, trips and falls down a ravine.
Descent
Grant and Sattler go down the hole of the raptor nest and Muldoon forces Gennaro to follow. The large manmade cavern is teeming with raptors of all ages. The three observe the animals as they seem to line up and suddenly all run down a concrete tunnel.
Hammond
Hammond is attacked and overwhelmed by a group of compys.
The Beach
Grant, Sattler, and Gennaro follow the raptors, emerging from the tunnel on the beach. The raptors again line up in a northeast-southwest formation and Grant assumes that they want to migrate.
Approaching Dark
Helicopters scare off the raptors while soldiers take Grant, Sattler, and Gennaro into a chopper where Muldoon and the kids are already on board. Muldoon informs them that Hammond and Malcolm are dead. The soldiers want to know who is in charge, but no one is.
Epilogue: San Joseé
The government retains everyone at a hotel for questioning. Guitierrez comes to visit and informs Grant that some animals had been eating local crops in a peculiar manner. They moved in a straight line from the coast into the mountain jungle, eating agama beans and soy—foods rich in lysine. The animals disappeared into the jungle, and now no one knows where they are.
Analysis
As the novel closes, we see that many characters meet fates that can been seen as appropriate or just deserts. Nedry, who endangers the entire island through his greed, is killed by dilophosaurs. Muldoon even notes the appropriateness of his demise after he finds Nedry's carcass: "Maybe there's justice in the world after all." Regis cowardly abandons the children, and in so doing seals his own fate. Although Hammond claims to have created the park for the children of the world, he modifies this statement and admits that only the world's richest kids would ever get to see his dinosaurs. Ultimately, all Hammond wants is to make a lot of money. Even after witnessing all the death and destruction his scheme causes on Isla Nublar, Hammond still intends to make another park with frozen embryos that he has in storage. The fact that his death comes about due to his own grandchildren, albeit accidentally and indirectly, adds irony to his fate.
Similarly, Arnold, so certain that he has everything under control, allows his confidence to lead to carelessness. It is fitting that he dies while trying to cover for his mistake, that he left the auxiliary power on. Dr. Wu never intends any harm, but conducts his manipulation of biology and genetics with such ignorance for the animals he is creating that it is no wonder he pays a price for messing with nature. Likewise, Gennaro, though always skeptical that Jurassic Park is not safe enough for visitors, still schemes about making a fortune from Hammond's idea. Though Gennaro manages to survive, Grant forces him to help scope out the raptor nest before he leaves the island— a duty that Gennaro initially refuses to accept. Grant is adamant, however, that take responsibility for his part in creating this park. In a sense, then, though Gennaro survives, he nonetheless pays his dues.
Meanwhile, the main protagonists and seemingly responsible characters—Grant, Sattler, Tim, and Lex—all survive virtually unscratched. Muldoon, who always has had reservations about the park's safety and Hammond's methods, and who tirelessly fights to keep the dinosaurs in check, also makes it out alive. Harding, the unassuming vet whom we never see committing any significant wrong, manages to survive as well.
The only confusing character is Malcolm, who has all along told Hammond not to build the park because it is a bad idea. It may seem somewhat odd, then, that he dies. Perhaps Malcolm's certainty that chaos theory and its fatal implications for the island will prove true actually wills his own death in a sense. Alternatively, it may be that Crichton is merely rewarding Malcolm's smug, swaggering arrogance with particularly harsh retribution.

Jurassic park

Third Iteration
Summary
Jurassic Park
On their way to the rooms at the resort, Grant thinks about the controversy among scientists over whether dinosaurs were cold-blooded or warm-blooded animals. Sattler notices a poisonous variety of Jurassic-era fern carelessly planted next to a swimming pool. Once in their rooms, Grant and Sattler notice additional bars—which had not appeared in the construction plans—protecting the windows.
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
Before they depart on a tour of the island, Gennaro tells Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm that he wants to know whether they think the park is safe. He mentions the incident with Tina on Costa Rica, and then refers to reports of lizard attacks and increasing infant mortality rates in Costa Rican costal villages. Malcolm claims that chaos theory implies that animals have gotten off the island, which annoys Hammond. A helicopter arrives with Hammond's grandchildren, an eleven-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl. The presence of the children annoys Gennaro.
The Tour
Tim Murphy, Hammond's grandson, is a dinosaur nut and immediately recognizes Dr. Grant. Ed Regis takes everyone to the laboratories, annoyed that he seems to have been put on babysitting duty. In the lab, Dr. Wu explains that they retrieve their dinosaur DNA from biting insects that have been preserved within ancient amber. In the nursery they see a baby velociraptor, which looks like a small lizard that stands upright and has yellow and brown stripes. The raptor jumps into Tim's arms. Dr. Wu explains that, to prevent breeding, their dinosaurs are sterilized and all of them are engineered to be female. Malcolm is skeptical.
Control
Malcolm asks Wu if they had engineered any procompsognathus, or compys—the animal suspected of biting Tina. Wu explains that they had, but that it would be impossible for the animals to get to the mainland because he had engineered all of them to be dependent on lysine, a key nutrient. Without the special supplements the dinosaurs receive at the park, they would go without lysine and die within twelve hours. While visiting the raptor holding pen, Grant notices that one raptor is stalking them from within its cage. Suddenly two other raptors attack from the left and right, but are held back by the electric fence. The speed of the animal reminds Grant of the cassowary, a clawed ostrich-like bird from New Guinea.
Version 4.4
Wu approaches Hammond at his bungalow and asks about creating another version of the dinosaurs that currently inhabit the park—version 4.4. Wu claims that the animals are too fast and difficult for the staff to handle, and that the people who visit the parks would probably prefer seeing slower versions anyway. Hammond scoffs at the idea, saying that if they were made slower they would not be real dinosaurs. Wu claims that they are already not real, as they are engineered to begin with, a reconstruction of the past rather than a recreation. Hammond still adamantly refuses to consider the idea.
Control
In the control room, John Arnold, the chief engineer, explains that the animals in the park are monitored and tallied by a variety of computerized methods. Motion sensors cover ninety-two percent of the park and video surveillance equipment keeps constant visual tabs on the animals. Malcolm asks about data studies of the animals, so Arnold shows him a graph of procompsognathid height distribution that appears to be a normal distribution for a healthy biological population. Malcolm states that the graph's seeming normality implies problems with the animals: since Jurassic Park is a controlled environment and not the real world, it should not contain a "normal" biological population.
The Tour
Gennaro does not care for Malcolm's pessimism and is still annoyed about the presence of the children. Gennaro, Malcolm, Regis, Grant, Sattler, and the children are taken on a tour of the island in two electrically automated Land Rovers. The tour begins with the hypsilophodontid habitat, but the group is unable to see the animals. But Tim spots an othnielia in the trees. A pre- recorded mating call rouses several hypsilophodontids.
Control
Arnold and Robert Muldoon, the head animal warden, argue with Hammond about the island's many problems. Hammond ignores them, saying "oh balls." The tour passes a group of dilophosaurs—a brightly colored breed that had the park operators had just discovered to be poisonous—and then some triceratops. Lex, Tim's sister, is annoyed that the animals seem so boring and inactive.
Big Rex
While the tour group waits outside the tyrannosaurus paddock, Muldoon ponders how dangerous the park is. No one had any idea that the dilophosaurs could spit venom until one of the handlers was almost blinded. Muldoon is especially wary of the velociraptors, which had killed two construction workers and were adept at breaking out of their cages. On the tour, a live goat is used to lure the tyrannosaurus, which finally appears and eats the helpless animal.
Control
Hammond, sitting in the control room, listens over the radio to the tour group discuss the unpleasant consequences of the t-rex ever escaping. He is annoyed at their negativity. Muldoon walks down to the basement and puts a rocket launcher in his jeep, one of only two gas-powered cars on the island. Tim claims to see a mid-sized raptor running through a field. Because of a developing storm and insufficient protection at the dock, Hammond is forced to call off a supply ship before it unloads the equipment he has ordered.
Stegosaur
The tour stops to see Dr. Harding, the island vet, who is treating a sick stegosaurus. Dr. Sattler figures out that the animals are falling ill because they are eating a certain kind of berry. Grant finds the remains of a raptor eggshell, which is odd considering the animals have supposedly been engineered to be unable to reproduce.
Control
Malcolm points out an error in the park's computerized tally of the animals. The tallying system, which had been designed primarily to make sure none of the animals went missing, fails to account for the appearance of any extra animals. Upon Malcolm's suggestion, the computer shows that there are more procompsognathids, maiasaurs, othnielias, hypsilophodontids, and velociraptors than expected. Somehow the animals are breeding.
Breeding Sites
Grant suggests that, despite the precautions that have been taken, the dinosaurs may be able to breed because Dr. Wu has substituted frog DNA in order to fill gaps in the dinosaur DNA they retrieved from amber. Hungry for dinner, Tim, Lex, and Regis get in one car, while Malcolm and Grant get in the other. Sattler stays with Dr. Harding to tend to the sick stegosaur, and Gennaro joins them so that he can flirt with Sattler. Malcolm is worried because chaos theory predicts that a sudden drastic change will take place on the island soon.
Playing around with some binoculars, Lex spots several small velociraptors on the supply ship that has just left the island. Meanwhile, Nedry jams the computer system and phone lines so that he can sneak into the fertilization room and steal the embryos without setting off the security system. Nedry then takes Muldoon's jeep to drive to the dock. Arnold realizes that Nedry has turned off the security systems, and realizes that the electric fences keeping the animals confined are therefore no longer functioning. Furthermore, Nedry's power cut has disabled the tour cars, leaving the tour group stuck in the now-motionless cars. Muldoon leaves to go get the tour group, but suddenly realizes his jeep is gone.
Analysis
In this section, Crichton increasingly incorporates elements of science into the book. Graphs, charts, DNA readouts, and lots of scientific background information are included to help explain how dinosaurs could be cloned and what sort of high-tech measures might be employed on an island that tried to contain them. Malcolm's discussions of chaos theory becomes more frequent and detailed, foreshadowing something uncertain and ominous. Although chaos theory implies that the activity of a complex system such as Jurassic Park cannot be predicted, Malcolm says that this very unpredictability implies that something unpredicted will happen.
As the plot gains momentum, the chapter titles begin to alternate in a regular manner. Every other chapter has a descriptive title, such as "The Tour" or "Big Rex," interspersed with several chapters that are titled "Control." In one sense, this name is appropriate because the narrative perspective is switching back and forth between the control room and other areas of the park. The word "control" is also a scientific term, however, referring to a convention of scientific experimentation. If a scientist is studying the effects that a chemical has on wood, for example, he or she will ready two samples of wood and add the chemical to only one of the samples. The untreated sample becomes the control group, and the scientist determines the effects of the chemical by comparing the piece of wood that has been treated to the one that has not. In other words, the control group should remain the same throughout the duration of an experiment.
This idea of the control group can be applied to this section of the novel. The control room of Jurassic Park is supposed to be able to keep the entire island stable and in check. Throughout this section, the narrator's perspective shifts from one part of the park to another. Each time this happens, the reader gains new and unsettling clues: The baby raptor that jumps into Tim's arms looks and behaves just like the animal that attacked Tina, leading us to wonder whether raptors have reached the mainland. Even Dr. Wu becomes nervous about the animals he is creating, as more and more evidence appears indicating that the dinosaurs are breeding. Throughout these revelations the perspective repeatedly returns to the control room, but the control room appears less and less stable each time we return to it. We get glimpses of Muldoon's and Arnold's nervousness that reveal obvious flaws in Hammond's organization of the park. Finally, when Malcolm exposes defects in the park's computer system, the dependability of the entire control room is suddenly called into question. If we consider Jurassic Park one big experiment and the control room representing a supposed force of constancy, just like a scientific control group, by the end of this section we get the sense that the experiment has gone seriously awry.

Jurassic park

Second Iteration
Summary
The Shore of the Inland Island
Alan Grant, a famous paleontologist, is excavating fossilized dinosaur nests at a dig site in Snakewater, Montana. The site was formerly the shoreline of a great inland sea that spanned from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians eighty million years ago. Grant and his paleobotanist colleague, Ellie Sattler, meet with Bob Morris of the Environmental Protection Agency. Morris is investigating some suspicious activities on the part of the Hammond Foundation, an important source of funding for Grant's research.

Recently, the Hammond Foundation has been sponsoring only cold-weather dinosaur digs, has built the largest stockpile of amber in the world, and has leased an island off Costa Rica, Isla Nublar, for use as a biological preserve. Morris also has learned from the Office of Technology Transfer that InGen, Hammond's company on Isla Nublar, has been gathering extremely powerful computer and gene sequencing technology. This suspicious behavior has the EPA concerned that InGen may be engaging in irresponsible genetic engineering activity in Costa Rica, and causes Morris to recall a small rabies outbreak the Biosyn Corporation had caused in Chile several years before. Grant explains that, years ago, InGen had asked him to act as a consultant regarding the eating habits of baby dinosaurs. Morris leaves and Grant and Sattler have a good laugh, not being able to imagine John Hammond, a goofy old man who likes dinosaurs, as some sort of villain.
Skeleton
Alice Levin, the lab technician at Columbia University, faxes Grant an x-ray of the remains of the lizard that bit Tina. Grant and Sattler are stunned to see that it is actually a dinosaur. They think it is likely a Procompsognathus but wonder whether it could be a hoax. They discuss the possibility of an animal from the Triassic period, 220 million years ago, surviving undiscovered. Just then the phone rings and it is Hammond, who tries to convince Grant to visit his biological preserve on Isla Nublar. Grant is reluctant, explaining that he wants to pursue this discovery of a living procompsognathid—which greatly interests Hammond—but gives in when Hammond offers $60,000 each to Grant and Sattler.
Cowan, Swain and Ross
In San Francisco, Donald Gennaro, InGen's lawyer, is discussing John Hammond with his boss, Daniel Ross. Between the EPA investigation, workers dying in Costa Rica, and the lizard attacks, InGen's investors are getting nervous. InGen instructs Gennaro to investigate Isla Nublar along with Grant, Sattler, and another consultant, a mathematician named Ian Malcolm. Gennaro calls Grant and requests the location of the procompsognathus remains, supposedly so that he can have it sent to them while they are on the island.
Plans
Grant and Sattler receive what appear to be architectural plans for Isla Nublar. The island seems to consist of a resort and a giant zoo, which is fortified in a strangely extensive manner. They return to the dig site, where they are trying to cover up the skeleton of an infant velociraptor before leave for Costa Rica. Though a full-grown velociraptor weighed only two hundred pounds, it was a quick and intelligent predator that hunted in packs and killed its prey with a six- inch-long, single-toed claw.
Hammond
As Gennaro leaves the InGen office, Ross tells him that if anything is wrong with the island he should "burn it to the ground." Gennaro gets on Hammond's plane and the two exchange pleasantries. Hammond says that his island is nearly ready and that he has fifteen species of animals. Gennaro recalls his early work with Hammond, rounding up investors for InGen. He remembers the nine-inch elephant Hammond used to carry around to fund-raising meetings. It was a mean little elephant, rodent-like in size and demeanor, but it helped them raise $870 million from people hoping to exploit the emerging technology of bioengineering.
Choteau
Grant and Sattler wait at an airfield for Hammond's plane, thinking how much they despise having to raise the money for their research. In the plane they meet Gennaro, whom they both dislike.
Target of Opportunity
The board of directors of the Biosyn Corporation is having an emergency meeting at their headquarters in Cupertino, California. Lewis Dodgson, a reckless geneticist, is the head of product development at Biosyn, which essentially means he steals competitors' products in order to make his own versions based on the originals. He explains to the board that InGen is building a zoo for cloned dinosaurs on Isla Nublar and that he has a possible way of pilfering their dinosaur DNA. He asks the directors if he should proceed with his plan, and they all nod their heads.
Airport
Dodgson meets with his inside man from InGen at the San Francisco airport. He gives the man half his money, $700,000, and says he wants fifteen embryos, not just DNA. He gives the man a Gillette Foamy shaving cream canister with a secret coolant compartment that will be used to transport the embryos. The man says he will turn over the embryos to a boat that should wait for him on the east dock of the island.
Malcolm
Hammond's plane picks up Dr. Ian Malcolm, a confident and chatty member of the computer-savvy, nonlinear-equation-based mathematical vanguard who is dressed entirely in black clothes. Malcolm makes a pass at Sattler and hands out a paper explaining why he thinks Isla Nublar is doomed. He says that, according to a new mathematical field called chaos theory, Hammond's island will quickly begin to behave in an unpredictable manner, despite the precautions that have been taken.
Isla Nublar
The plane reaches San José where the group disembarks and boards a helicopter. They pick up Dennis Nedry, a fat and impolite computer technician, and fly to Isla Nublar, a mist-shrouded, hilly, and rugged island that has been formed by upthrusting volcanic rock. After a precarious landing, Ed Regis meets the group, who get their first glimpse of a living dinosaur.
Welcome
They have arrived at Jurassic Park. Ellie looks at the brontosaurus and thinks that it is more graceful than any depiction of the species she has ever seen in a book. The creature trumpets like an elephant and then three more dinosaurs appear. Gennaro thinks that the dinosaurs will make him rich. Grant observes the animals, thinking that they are moving faster than they are supposed to. Two more appear and they remind Grant of giraffes.
Analysis
In these chapters Crichton abandons the novel's initial sense of hinting and mystery by filling us in outright that InGen is indeed hiding some dangerous secrets. The protagonists and antagonists are now more clearly identified. Although several characters and settings are introduced in this section, the bulk of the narration takes place from the perspective of Grant. He is the only paleontologist on Isla Nublar, and thus, presumably, knows more about the dinosaurs than anyone else there.
While Morris visits with Grant and Sattler, his comments about gene-splicing equipment and Hammond lead us to believe that Isla Nublar is home to a shady genetic engineering lab. When Morris recalls an outbreak of rabies in Chile caused by an American biotech company, we recall Tina's father being concerned about her catching rabies from her lizard bites. Though the nervous discussion between Gennaro and Ross indicate that there could be something to fear from Hammond's operation with InGen, the mystery seems a little less ominous once the reader discovers that Hammond has been engineering dinosaurs rather than some sort of deadly lizard-virus. Instead, Dodgson and the Biosyn Corporation, who are responsible for the rabies outbreak in Chile, take on the role of lead villain at this point. Although he is never named, process of elimination leads us to believe that the man Biosyn has hired to steal embryos from InGen is Nedry. Nedry thus becomes the novel's primary antagonist.
There is little outright conflict at this point in the novel. Once we know that a dinosaur has in fact been biting children in Costa Rica, that mystery is solved. Grant is now the main character, but it does not appear as if Nedry's theft would have any effect on Grant, as the paleontologist has no real stake in InGen. The issue that emerges now, however, is the safety and success of Isla Nublar itself. Gennaro and Ross's discussions are obviously skeptical speculation. Grant, Sattler, Malcolm, and Gennaro are all visiting the island to evaluate it and say whether or not they think it will work. We can see Malcolm's intense skepticism based on chaos theory, then, as a kind of prediction that Hammond's island cannot be controlled. Now that the group has all arrive, they will get a first-hand look at whether or not Malcolm is right.
Crichton maintains his bird-dinosaur blurring in these chapters. Morris says that Grant's dinosaur fossils look like chicken bones, while Grant describes procompsognathus as being about the size of a chicken and states that velociraptor was "as finely tuned as a bird." The reason for these comparisons do not become more until Grant and company have closer interaction with the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar, but even from their initial observations Grant and Sattler are obviously surprised at how deftly the dinosaurs move. At this point, the connection between birds and dinosaurs emphasizes that the creatures are not necessarily the lumbering beasts they are often depicted to be in popular culture.

Jurassic park

Almost Paradise
Mike Bowman is on vacation in Costa Rica with his wife, Ellen, and their daughter, Tina. The family drives a Land Rover through Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve in search of a deserted beach. When they get to the beach, Ellen is worried about Tina encountering snakes, but Mike convinces his wife not to worry. Tina runs off to search for a three-toed sloth. While exploring, Tina spots lots of three-toed bird tracks and hears chirping sounds. Instead of a bird, however, a small a green and brown-striped lizard emerges from the jungle. It stands on its hind legs, bobs its head like a chicken, and chirps. Tina notices it has three toes and makes tracks like those she saw in the sand. Just as the lizard begins to attack Tina, the perspective shifts back to Mike and Ellen down the beach, who are wondering where Tina is until they hear her screams.
Puntarenas
At the hospital in Puntarenas, Dr. Cruz thinks Tina will be alright. Mike recalls that when he found Tina, her left arm had been covered in thumbprint- sized bites and a sticky, saliva-like foam. As Mike and Dr. Cruz look at the picture Tina has drawn of the lizard that bit her, the doctor admits that he is not an expert on lizards and has thus requested the help of a Dr. Guitierrez from across the bay.
When Dr. Guitierrez, an American, shows up, he feels confident that the lizard that bit Tina was a Basiliscus amoratus, although he claims that a few of the details in Tina's picture, like the elongated neck and three toes, seem inaccurate. On her way out of the hospital, Tina makes some keen observations concerning Dr. Cruz's change of clothing. Cruz then asks the girl if she is certain that the lizard had three toes, and she replies that she is. Seemingly convinced of the girl's clever memory, Cruz relates his encounter with Tina to Dr. Guitierrez, who is no longer sure that Tina was bitten by a basilisk lizard.
The Beach
Guitierrez is on the beach of Cabo Blanco, near the place where the lizards attacked Tina. He thinks about the recent reports of lizards attacking local babies and muses that basilisk lizards are not normally violent. He concludes that perhaps deforestation has driven a previously unknown species of lizard out of a more remote part of the jungle. As Guitierrez is leaving the beach, he notices a howler monkey eating a green and brown-striped lizard. He retrieves the carcass and concludes that he will send it to Dr. Simpson at Columbia University, a leading world authority on lizard taxonomy.
New York
Dr. Simpson is in Borneo on field research, so the carcass is sent to Dr. Richard Stone, head of the Tropical Diseases Laboratory at Columbia. He does some analysis of the sample, concluding that there is no risk of viral or bacterial infection from the lizard. He sends a fax to Costa Rica that puts Guitierrez at ease. Meanwhile, a midwife at Bobbie's clinic returns to a bassinet in the clinic one night to find three lizards eating the baby that is lying inside.
The Shape of the Data
Not wanting to get in trouble for neglecting the baby, the midwife reports the infant's cause of death as SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome. The lab that analyzed the saliva from Tina's bite wounds has discovered a primitive neurotoxin in it that is related to cobra venom. At Columbia, a technician named Alice Levin notices Tina's drawing and refers to it as a "dinosaur." Dr. Stone corrects her, stating that it is a lizard. Levin argues with Stone, claiming that she should know, because her kids are obsessed with dinosaurs. She suggests sending the lizard to the Museum of Natural History, but Stone wants to wait for Dr. Simpson.
Analysis
Crichton employs two literary techniques—dramatic irony and foreshadowing—to establish the beginning of Jurassic Park as a quickly unfolding mystery. Almost immediately, Bobbie is suspicious of the nature of the InGen Construction worker's injuries, which foreshadows InGen as a source of suspicious activity. Later, when the foamy saliva found on the worker's injuries also appears on Tina after her lizard attack, it is clearly implied that the worker was also bitten, rather than involved in a construction accident.
As its operations are located on an island about a hundred miles off Costa Rica, InGen is also associated with the "hupia" spirits that are purported to dwell on offshore islands and kidnap children. The injured construction worker claims that a "hupia" was responsible for his injuries. These hupia are also the first significant symbols in the book: after Tina is attacked, Dr. Guitierrez's research indicates that several babies around Costa Rica have similarly been attacked recently. Considering these events along with the injured InGen worker, we infer that the hupia are closely tied to InGen and lizards.
Of course, as Crichton has already allowed us to follow the perspectives of several different characters in several different settings, we have privileged information at this stage of the novel. Dr. Guitierrez does not know about the InGen worker's accident, and thus has no way of knowing about the saliva on the InGen worker's wounds. Crichton employs this sort of dramatic irony to give the story an eerie, something-is-awry feeling that we vaguely feel has something to do with whatever InGen is doing on the island off Costa Rica.
Crichton also uses this dramatic irony to take a jab at the scientific community. In the introduction, he discusses how, over the last several decades, the scientific community has been increasingly divided by commercial interests. Even academic scientists sway with the business world these days, a trend that he claims has debilitated the entire scientific community. Throughout this section, Crichton takes care to point out the inefficiency of the scientific organizations that are working in various capacities to investigate the situation in Costa Rica. Dr. Guitierrez ignores Tina's insistence that the lizard has three toes and proceeds to identify the lizard as a basilisk, which halts proper analysis of the saliva from her wounds. Instead, the saliva sample is sent to a different lab in San José. Meanwhile, though the lizard carcass Guitierrez sends to Dr. Simpson at Columbia is never properly identified because Simpson is in Borneo, a fax sent to Guitierrez misleads him into believing that his identification of the lizard as a basilisk is correct. Finally, the lab technicians in San José notice unusual aspects of Tina's lizard saliva sample that link it to cobra venom, but then fail to note a genetic marker they have discovered&mdah;because the marker is not normally found in wild animals, they dismiss it as a lab contaminant. Crichton presents all of this data as dots the scientists fail to connect, which furthers our suspicion that everything, particularly the genetic engineering marker, is somehow related to InGen.
Most of the foreshadowing here revolves around the idea that dinosaurs are related to birds, an idea that Crichton will explore at length throughout the novel. At this point, the concept is merely hinted at: the injured InGen worker used the word "raptor" which Manuel associates with "hupia." Bobbie looks the word up in two dictionaries, finding the definitions "abductor" and "bird of prey." Tina states that the lizard tracks looked like bird tracks and says the lizard chirped and bobbed its head like a chicken, furthering this connection between lizards and birds that hints at dinosaurs, the common ancestor of these two modern-day animal types.

Jurassic park

Introduction–First Iteration
Summary
Introduction
In the late twentieth century, the field of biotechnology and genetic engineering has positioned itself to become one of the great technological revolutions of human history. Yet, things changed when Herber Boyer, a biochemist at the University of California, founded the company Genentech in 1976 to exploit the commercial potential of his research. Since then the field has exploded into a global amalgam of private research firms developing frivolous, profit-hungry products, such as square trees tailor-made for lumber, without any sort of government regulation.

The appearance of a company like International Genetic Technologies, then should come as no surprise. InGen, as the company is informally known, apparently was the instigator of some sort of "incident," and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1989. The proceedings drew little publicity, but certain parties involved were amenable to discussing the events that transpired on a remote island off the shores of Costa Rica...

Prologue: The Bite of the Raptor
Roberta "Bobbie" Carter, a doctor working in a medical center in Bahia Anasco, Costa Rica, is on duty one stormy night with her paramedic, Manuel. An "InGen Construction" helicopter lands nearby and a red-haired man named Ed Regis brings in a man who he claims was injured in a construction accident. Bobbie suggests Regis bring the patient, a young man around eighteen years old, to San José, the nearby capital city where better facilities are available. Regis resists, claiming the helicopter cannot make it any further in the bad weather.
Bobbie looks at the boy's injuries, tear-like lacerations across his torso and thigh, and is skeptical they were really caused by construction equipment. She asks Regis to leave and takes a few photographs of the injuries, then the boy wakes up whispering, "Lo sa raptor." Manuel is obviously distressed by the slippery, foul-smelling foam they have found on the boy's cuts and by the boy's eerie "raptor" statement. Nonetheless, Manuel claims he does not know what the phrase means.
As the boy continues to whisper, Manuel states that the boy has been bitten by one of the raptors or "hupia"—ghosts who, according to a local superstition, live in the islands offshore and kidnap children. The boy suddenly sits up, vomits blood and falls to the floor, convulsing. He is dead. Curious about the word "raptor," Bobbie looks it up in a Spanish dictionary and finds that it means "abductor." She also looks it up in an English dictionary, which says that it means "bird of prey."

Jurassic Park

Character List
Dr. Alan Grant - A paleontologist famous for his studies of fossilized dinosaur nests in Montana. Grant is athletic and down-to-earth, and takes pride in not being a stuffy academic like many of his colleagues. Although certain characters seem to resent the presence of Hammond's grandchildren, Grant likes children and is quickly drawn to Tim in particular. The majority of the novel is written from Grant's perspective

John Hammond - The owner of the bioengineering firm InGen and a well-known dinosaur fanatic. Hammond spends a decade furiously scrambling to clone dinosaurs, partly out of a sincere love of dinosaurs, but also because he is hell-bent on turning his idea into a huge profit. Hammond's greed often seems to supercede his judgment: the worse things get in Jurassic Park, the angrier he gets at those who want to shut the park down.

Dr. Ian Malcolm - A mathematician who specializes in the emerging field of chaos theory. Malcolm is part of a new breed of mathematician, with a vibrant personality and a wardrobe that seems to consist only of black. One of the original consultants for Jurassic Park, he has always been skeptical that the idea could work. Once Malcolm actually gets to see the island, his predictions of the park's doom get more and more antagonistic, eliciting Hammond's anger.

Tim Murphy - Hammond's eleven-year-old grandson. Tim is an expert on dinosaurs. When the dinosaurs at Jurassic Park start attacking the park's guests, the perspective often shifts Tim to heighten the tension. Tim is noticeably more mature than his sister, making him the more reliable narrator of what happens to the children.

Lex Murphy - Tim's younger sister. Whereas Tim handles the shocks, scares, and predicaments of Jurassic Park with astonishing grace, Lex is prone to cry or whine when the chips are down. She enjoys baseball and teasing her brother, and her young age and close calls with death make her a very sympathetic character.
Dennis Nedry - Jurassic Park's computer technician. Nedry is hired by the Biosyn Corporation to steal fifteen of the park's dinosaur embryos. The Biosyn Corporation is perhaps the novel's major antagonist, embodying the evil, negligent possibilities of bioengineering. Nedry is smart, fat, and surly, and, in his dealings with Biosyn, represents the novel's lone antagonist human character. His computer hacking is responsible for all the problems that send Jurassic Park into turmoil.
Donald Gennaro - The head of InGen's account with the law firm Cowain, Swain and Ross. Gennaro is nervous about the progress of Jurassic Park and has heard rumors of animals getting off the island. He forces Hammond into bringing Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm in to evaluate the park. Nevertheless, Gennaro's firm has a stake in InGen, and as soon as he sees the dinosaurs he starts thinking about all the money he can make.
Dr. Ellie Sattler - Grant's partner on the Montana fossil dig. Sattler is an attractive, twenty- four-year-old specialist in paleobotany. Though the first half of the novel banters evasively around the idea that Grant and Sattler might be dating, Grant finally reveals to Tim that he and Sattler are not, in fact, romantically involved, as she is actually getting married to a Midwestern doctor sometime in the next year.
Dr. Henry Wu - A scientist Hammond has hired directly out of graduate school to begin work on developing a dinosaur cloning process. Wu is never very concerned about the animals themselves, and has next to no knowledge about dinosaurs as a species. He is only involved with the park because of the inevitable money and fame such research could bring him.
Robert Muldoon - The park's game warden, formerly a big-game hunter and zoo consultant. Muldoon's primary task is to keep the dinosaurs from eating people or each other. Irritated that Hammond refuses give him more firepower to handle large species like the tyrannosaurus, Muldoon is more concerned about the raptors, which are totally unmanageable. He thinks they should all be terminated.
Ed Regis - The park publicist who feels annoyed that he must play babysitter to the park visitors.
John Arnold - The head engineer at Jurassic Park, who previously worked with missiles and at amusement parks. Arnold, confident that he can control the entire park virtually by himself, claims that Malcolm's predictions for the park represent a misapplication of chaos theory.
Dr. Harding - The in-house veterinarian at Jurassic Park who treats a sick stegosaurus as the tour group passes by.
Bob Morris - An EPA investigator who visits Grant and Sattler in Montana. Morris is digging up dirt to support his suspicion of Hammond, InGen, and the activity on Isla Nublar.
Dr. Roberta "Bobbie" Carter - A doctor who works at a medical center in Costa Rica. On duty one night at the beginning of the novel, Bobbie is called to treat an InGen employee who has allegedly been injured in a construction accident. The employee's wounds are suspicious, however, leading Bobbie to believe that InGen is not telling the truth about the accident.
Manuel - Dr. Carter's paramedic, who is distressed by the injuries to the InGen employee and thinks they were caused by a hupia.
Mike, Ellen, and Tina Bowman - A family vacationing in Costa Rica. Tina, the young daughter, is attacked by mysterious lizards on the beach at the beginning of the novel.
Dr. Cruz - The doctor who treats Tina Bowman in Costa Rica. Dr. Cruz is not an expert on lizards, so he refers Tina's case to Dr. Guitierrez, who is more knowledgeable.
Dr. Guitierrez - An American doctor in Costa Rica who believes Tina has been attacked by a basilisk lizard. However, Dr. Guitierrez later finds a carcass of a lizard matching Tina's description. It is not a basilisk, so he sends it to Columbia University for identification.
Dr. Simpson - A leading world authority on lizards who works at Columbia University.
Dr. Richard Stone - The head of the Tropical Diseases Laboratory at Columbia University. Dr. Stone analyzes the lizard carcass and concludes it poses no threat of infection.
Alice Levin - A technician at Columbia University who sees Tina's drawing of the lizard that attacked her and identifies it as a dinosaur. Alice's coworkers are unbelieving, however.
Lewis Dodgson - A reckless geneticist who is the head of product development at Biosyn Corporation. Dodgson is the one who hires Nedry to attempt to steal InGen's technology from Jurassic Park.