Jurassic Park (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
By SparkNotes
()
About this ebook
Making the reading experience fun!
Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster. Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides: *Chapter-by-chapter analysis
*Explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols
*A review quiz and essay topics Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers
Read more from Spark Notes
King Lear: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Romeo & Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bird by Bird (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Romeo and Juliet: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Much Ado About Nothing (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMeasure for Measure (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Richard III (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tempest (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As You Like It (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of Solitude (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Outsiders (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMerchant of Venice: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Fear Shakespeare Audiobook: Julius Caesar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Gentlemen of Verona (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Winter's Tale (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Raisin in the Sun (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAtlas Shrugged SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHenry V (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tempest: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Othello (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Henry IV Parts One and Two (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Merchant of Venice (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dune (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsComedy of Errors (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51984 SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Lear (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richard II (No Fear Shakespeare) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Julius Caesar: No Fear Shakespeare Deluxe Student Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Jurassic Park (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
Related ebooks
Jurassic Park: The Official Script Book: Complete with Annotations and Illustrations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrinted People: Elektra, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Throne of Kepler Eagle: The Power of Blue Slime Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBug Hunts: Surviving and Combating the Alien Menace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dr. Grend Is Missing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDreamFlowering Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImprint of Blood: Birth of the Rim, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNanomachine War: Nanotech Terror Weapon Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Fibers: Geoengineering Morgellons DNA Assault Without Your Approval Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaddrax: Volume 3 (English Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Kepler Code Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Curse of the Facebook Giraffe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaddrax: Volume 4 (English Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaddrax: Volume 5 (English Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY The Ultimate Guide to Jurassic Park Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaddrax: Volume 2 (English Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaddrax: Volume 1 (English Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArrival: Octant Chronicles #0 Prequel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSauria: A Prehistoric Anthology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProject Earth: Vice or Virtue Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaddrax: Volume 6 (English Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Terra Debacle: Prisoners at Area 51 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Science of Jurassic World: The Dinosaur Facts Behind the Films Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDino Gangs: Dr Philip J Currie’s New Science of Dinosaurs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Worldship Praxis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEco Bio Rangers "Inclemencies" Much More than Just Bad Weather: Eco Bio Rangers, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Story of the Century: Revised Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMysterium Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Genesis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUniversalia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Book Notes For You
Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill: Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Ichiro Kishimi's and Fumitake Koga's book: The Courage to Be Disliked: Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 5 AM Club Summary: Business Book Summaries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by John Gottman: Conversation Starters Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Summary: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Poverty, by America By Matthew Desmond Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Workbook for Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Summary of 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of How to Know a Person By David Brooks: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi: Summary by Fireside Reads Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Workbook & Summary of Becoming Supernatural How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon by Joe Dispenza: Workbooks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Reviews for Jurassic Park (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Jurassic Park (SparkNotes Literature Guide) - SparkNotes
Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton
© 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing
This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
Sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes LLC
Spark Publishing
A Division of Barnes & Noble
120 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
www.sparknotes.com /
ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7603-5
Please submit changes or report errors to www.sparknotes.com/.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Context
Plot Overview
Character List
Character Analysis
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Introduction-First Iteration
Second Iteration
Third Iteration
Fourth Iteration
Fifth Iteration-Epilogue
Important Quotations Explained
Key Facts
Study Questions and Suggested Essay Topics
Review & Resources
Context
John Michael Crichton was born in Chicago in October 1942. Educated at Harvard, Crichton paid his way through medical school there by writing thrillers under various pseudonyms. After graduation, he published his first full-length novel under his own name, The Andromeda Strain (1969), which was a bestseller. Although Crichton has written in numerous contexts, his most famous works, such as Jurassic Park (1990), combine contemporary technical and theoretical scientific findings with fast-paced, mystery or thriller plots. His books have been translated into thirty languages and been made into eleven films. Crichton also created and produced the popular television series of the late 1990s, ER. In 2000, a newly discovered small dinosaur was named after him: Bienosaurus crichtoni.
By the end of the twentieth century, computers had found a place in many American homes. The United States had harnessed nuclear power decades ago, doctors had long since discovered antibiotics, and the scientific community was ready for a new mammoth breakthrough. Genetic engineering loomed as an important field, wide open with possible applications in everything from medicine to cosmetics. Just seven years after the publication of Jurassic Park, British scientists successfully cloned a sheep. Although it certainly would have been impossible for a scenario like the one portrayed in Crichton's novel to have actually occurred in 1990—and most scientists still regard the likelihood of ever successfully cloning dinosaurs slim—the novel gave many readers their first exposure to the possibilities of genetics and bioengineering.
Jurassic Park also popularized the mathematical field of chaos theory. For four centuries, the laws of physics implied a complete connection between cause and effect in nature. It was presumed that it was always possible to make accurate long-term predictions of physical systems, as long as one knew the starting conditions well enough. The discovery of chaotic systems in nature around the turn of the twentieth century all but destroyed that notion. In the novel, Malcolm's interpretation of chaos theory asserts that Jurassic Park, as a complex physical system, will progress in a drastically unpredictable manner that will inevitably result in disaster, regardless of the precautions that have been taken.
Chaos theory and bioengineering ethics were already nascent topics of discussion when Crichton took them on in Jurassic Park. The success of his novel, especially after its release as a major motion picture, vaulted these topics into the global spotlight. Crichton's novel, however, critiques more than merely the large companies that have the potential to abuse the vast power of genetics. In the novel, John Hammond creates a park run almost entirely by the automation of a huge computer system. The system has bugs—defects that prove disastrous over the course of one twenty-four-hour period. Jurassic Park, written at a time when the whole world was computerizing seemingly all aspects of daily life, is also a critique of such incessant modernization and automation. The novel was published just ten years before the predicted turn-of- the-millennium Y2K
computer disaster had businesses across the globe scrambling to reassess their technological preparedness. Crichton seems prescient and wary of this trend: Malcolm's chaos-theory calculations of catastrophe, in addition to showing off hip scientific lingo, serve as a warning for a society increasingly dependent on technology.
Plot Overview
A previously unknown variety of three-toed lizard begins attacking children in Costa Rica. A sample carcass of the lizard is sent to a lab at Columbia University, where a lab technician, believing it is a dinosaur, calls the renowned paleontologist, Dr. Alan Grant. When Grant receives a fax of the lizard's skeleton, he is shocked to see that it is in fact a dinosaur. Before he can investigate any further, however, Grant and his research partner, Dr. Ellie Sattler, are flown to Isla Nublar, an island off