Jurassic Park | Style

Jurassic Park Style

Point of View Jurassic Park is told in third person, and the author switches between an omniscient third person and a limited-view third person. This gives him great control to sometimes relate the thoughts of the characters to the reader, but he sometimes builds suspense by following one character and only showing what they see when they see it. The point of view does not follow all the one group of people that jumps back and forth between the groups of people. In order to add to the staccato, rapid-fighter feeling of the action, but to also to show what some characters are doing while other characters are fighting for their lives in other parts of the park. This lets the author contrast the arrogant and opulent indifference of the Hammond, or the misconception of control by Arnold, with the desperate fight for survival of Dr. Grant and the children.

Setting Jurassic Park takes place in an island off of Costa Rica in August, 1989. The actual year is hardly important, since the tale simply works in a "modern" era. Jurassic Park, however, as a setting, is an island of contrast. On the one hand, it has been built and modified, with no expense spared, to create a safe and technologically advanced environment. On the other hand, it has been built to be a prehistoric world of vicious dinosaurs. When the technology fails, the dinosaurs are able to roam freely. The potential danger of the park is best described when Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler first arrive at the tourist compound and discover the security bars retrofitted to the windows in the lodge.

Language and Meaning The language used in the story had enough scientific complexity to make the story seem authentic and plausible, without becoming confusing and ponderous and losing the non-scientific reader. Unknown terms and ideas about genetics and chaos theory are explained in a way that makes the concepts easy to understand for the layperson and does not distract from the book. At times, entire pages were taken up with diagrams, meaningless strains of computer code, and lists of names, which the reader is not expected to read, but simply to observe as a whole, in order to lend an element of authenticity to the book. Without these realistic elements, the book would have a hard time seeming a real, which would not give it the same impact and feeling of tension that the reader felt as they read.

Structure The novel is divided into seven parts, called iterations, which follow Malcolm's theory about the unpredictability of life. In each of the iterations, his calculation comes true. The short chapters give the story, a staccato feeling of rapid-fire action, and make the story easy to read quickly, because the reader will continue to turn from short chapter to short chapter to see what is going on. The first six iterations end with a little but a resolution and a few more questions, as the tension rises through the book. Although total chaos breaks out in the first half of the book, the people fighting for control experience brief moments of control as they attempt to fight back. Although the cost is high, and they are unsuccessful at actually quelling the dinosaur threat, they move from victim to defender; and, in Dr. Grant, attacker.