Jurassic Park Essay, Research Paper

The author is Michael Crichton, and the book is The Lost World. Many people have read

this book, along with its predecessor, Jurassic Park, and many people have been enthralled

with the thought of living dinosaurs in the 20th century. “What if the dinosaurs did not

become extinct? What if they still exist?” (The Lost World takes off a couple years after

the first book. A separate island is discovered, an island where the dinosaurs were

actually created. There are two different research groups sent to the island. One to

observe the dinosaurs in the wild and the other to bring them back for research purposes.

The fighting starts from there. What many people don’t know, is that these books, along

with countless other Crichton works, contain many of the same themes. One of these

themes is that Technology will backfire if it is taken for granted. Also, he says that power

corrupts those who possess it. Chaos and randomness rule the world. Nothing can be

predicted, and nothing is as it seems. Last and not least, mother nature sits above all else.

Technology plays a key role in many parts of society in today’s world. Computers

run everything from huge assembly lines to the light switch. Some hard-core proof that

technology will backfire is the Year 2000 bug (Y2K). The Y2K bug will make many

computers not work properly, and in many cases, they will shut down completely. The

problem stems back some 50 years, to when the first computers were being made. It could

have been fixed in the 1970’s, but nobody figured out that it would be a problem until a

few years ago. People have taken for granted the use of computers for many years now,

and only now will people realize that we can’t depend upon new technology so much. This

is exactly what Michael Crichton means in The Lost World. The people who were

designing the dinosaurs didn’t realize how powerful the dinosaurs really were, and the

dinosaurs took over the island. Now the dinosaurs had all of the power.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”(MacBeth, William Shakespeare, Act )

Shakespeare was absolutely right. Power does corrupt those who have it. It can’t be

confirmed that the dictators that make it in to office are psychos beforehand, but the power

probably makes their greed a little worse. Bill Clinton and countless other world leaders

have abused their power. In The Lost World, a company called InGen literally holds the

power of life in its hands. InGen recreated real dinosaurs, which had previously been

extinct for hundreds of millions of years. They had the power, and then they abused it by

trying to make some money. If they had just gone about the research no one would have

been hurt, and everything would have worked out in the end, but the power consumed them.

“Hammond was a hustler, and his true talent was raising money…. He built his park in an

island called Isla Nublar,… but the park system broke down, and the dinosaurs got free.”

(Lost World pg. 209)

Crichton seems to view mathematics in a certain way. His character Ian Malcolm

has his Chaos Theory, and according to this theory, certain things cannot be explained or

predicted. The dinosaurs on the island were supposed to die off without a certain

chemical, but they lived anyway. That is a perfect example of the chaos theory. It just

can’t be explained. They only engineered female animals, because they didn’t want these

animals to be reproducing, but somehow they changed genders, and procreated. These

were all just examples of nature.

The last theme is that Crichton wants nature to be above all else. He believes that

nature is best left alone, and if it has worked for billions of years, it will continue to work

if we don’t fool around with it. Dinosaurs were living millions of years ago, and they

became extinct for a reason. “Evolution doesn’t always act like a blind force should.”

(Lost World pg. 207) No one really knows that reason. Who are we, as humans, to decide

what to bring back to life? The dinosaurs lived naturally for seven years on Isla Sorna, and

no one knew that they existed. When they were discovered, the dinosaurs were seen living

naturally for the first time by humans. The Tyrannosaurs had children, and were more calm

and laid back than previously thought. When a human went into the nest, the Tyrannosaurs

were terrified by what might happen to their young. They attacked with ferocity previously

unseen by human eyes. Michael Crichton felt that nature needed to be left alone, and he

communicated this point through the passive attitude of the dinosaurs in the wild, and the

aggressive attitude with humans around.

Obviously, Michaael Crichton has voiced his concerns about today’s society with

his themes in The Lost World. One of his main concerns was that technology will backfire

if it is taken for granted. He also showed that power can corrupt those who possess it.

This theme goes hand in hand with chaos and randomness controlling the world. Mother

Nature rules the world, is another theme that Crichton proves in The Lost World. Crichton

has proved that there are many themes in his books that show how he feels society is

moving. He thinks that his themes should be looked at closely, for they can help society in

the future.