Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park

Before reading the novel Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton I believed there was a hard line between what was reality versus fantasy, what was natural versus what was artificial. I now have had to reevaluate those distinctions I have made. Jurassic Park has shown me that it is not as simple as I once thought it was. This novel is about the “re-creation” of dinosaurs on the island of Isla Nublar off the coast of Costa Rica. Bringing animals that once roamed a very different Earth onto an island that was meant to recreate what once was. To create an amusement park slash zoo, of sorts, but one that the world has never seen before. However, one of the main issues of this novel is whether or not this island has accurately recreated the past habitat, …show more content…
In this passage we have the scientist Wu—who initially brought the dinosaurs back into this world—questioning the velociraptors’ behavior: “He was never sure, never really sure at all, whether the behavior of the animals was historically accurate or not. Were they behaving as they really had in the past? It was an open question, ultimately unanswerable” (Pg. 334). Wu knows deep down that no matter how badly he would like to think he replicated the dinosaur perfectly, there is just no way he did. The fact that Wu needed to fill in the DNA of other animals to make the dinosaurs come to life provides evidence that the dinosaurs are no more than synthetic creations. Not only did new DNA bring a new appearance to some of the dinosaurs but also behavioral characteristics came along with the supplemented DNA. This makes the dinosaurs artificial to the very core. But you still read about the characters (that know about the supplemented DNA) clinging to the idea that the dinosaurs are real and are behaving, as they should. As the reader it is easier to step back and look at the overall picture: these dinosaurs cannot be behaving as they once did because their very DNA makeup is artificial. Although, this does not make the dinosaurs any less real than say a baby orca that was bred at Sea World. It is clearly seen that the …show more content…
They are going to exist on this earth regardless. But, by questioning its importance you can look at the larger picture about what we are putting on our only livable planet. The fact is that we can do whatever we want to this planet, all we are doing is slowly making it less likely for humans to be able to survive here. The novel brings these thoughts forward by a morphine-induced monologue from a very intelligent man: “My point is the Earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years is a long time. … But to the Earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the Earth will not miss us” (Pg. 369). This planet has evolved time and time again, and most of its existence would not allow for humans to inhabit it. So why then, is it so hard for humans to understand that one day—since we cannot seem to take care of our environment—the earth will not be sustainable for human life. If the scientist had brought back genuine dinosaurs there would be no way for them to live out in the open of Isla Nublar. The atmosphere is now different, the water is different, and even the insects are all different; the