Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton is a riveting piece of science fiction. Most of the story takes place on an island off the Pacific side of Costa Rica. A deciduous rain forest inhabits most of the island. An eccentric old man named John Hammond leases the whole island to create a frightening dinosaur amusement park, using real dinosaurs. Within this jungle setting, Michael Crichton's engrossing, believable characters bring the story to life with quick action, intense dialogue and scientific questions.

John Hammond's amusement park is dedicated to making live dinosaur specimens available to view to the paying public by genetically splicing prehistoric DNA. To test out his park and prove to investors it is safe and real, he invites two paleontologists, Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler, his two grandchildren, Tim and Lex, and a mathematician, Ian Malcolm. While the guests are on a tour of the dinosaurs, a greedy self, obsessed computer programmer named Dennis Nedry shuts the security and power off using a trap door he built into his computer code, in order to steal valuable embryos of the dinosaurs in the park. While trying to flee from the park to deliver the embryos to a competing genetics company, Nedry comes across a few dilophosaurs, who have escaped, because along with security, the electric fences (to harbor the animals) has been shut off. The dilophosaurs leisurely kill Nedry by first spitting him in the eye with poisonous spit to make him blind, and then devouring him. Meanwhile, the guests are attacked by an escaped tyrannosaur. Throughout the last half of the book, Hammond and his assistants try to re-establish electric power, while Grant and Hammond's two grandchildren fight and outsmart dinosaurs to make it back to the main headquarters. In the end, Hammond dies from a dinosaur attack, along with seven other island visitors. His employees and guests are taken in to Costa Rican custody. A herd of velociraptors escapes from the island and the Costa Rican government kills the remaining dinosaurs.

Alan Grant is a very important character for the story. He is a paleontologist that shows three strong good qualities during his journey back to the control room., which are that he is a problem solver, an intelligent person and caring individual. Grant is in his mid-forties. He is an outdoor oriented person, wearing tennis shoes and jeans, even when teaching at universities. One of his qualities is that he is a problem solver. This is shown in discussions about dinosaurs. In one incident, Malcolm, Grant and Harding are disputing whether the egg is a dinosaur egg'. "'This must be a bird egg', Harding said...Grant shook his head. 'Look at the curvature. The shell is almost flat. That's from a very big egg. And notice the thickness of the shell'... Malcolm said, 'Can you tell the species?' 'Yes...it's a velociraptor egg."(p.160) Another quality is that he is intelligent. "Grant was a professor of paleontology at the University of Denver, and one of the foremost researchers in his field."(p.34) His knowledge of dinosaur behavior saves his life and the children's. One of the cleverest incidents is when he inserts poison in laboratory eggs and rolls it to an attacking velociraptor who is a egg eater. His caring personality is shown throughout Grant's journey through the park. Grant, "felt troubled. He didn't like the idea of dinosaurs being used for an amusement park."(p.131) He risks his own life over and over again to save the children.

Jurassic