113 pages • 3 hours read
Michael CrichtonJurassic Park
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6: “Sixth Iteration”
Part 6, Chapter 1 Summary: “Return”
Grant and the children take the electric vehicle through a tunnel under the waterfall. It leads them right back to the visitor center, and they are elated to be safe, finally. When they walk in, they are shocked to find the windows shattered and nobody in sight. A sign saying, “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” (356) hangs on one hinge. Grant manages to get through to Sattler on the radio, who is relieved to hear that Grant and the kids are alive. He explains that they only have 30 minutes before the boat reaches the mainland with raptors on board, and Muldoon pipes in noting that they are currently surrounded by two at the lodge. He clicks the radio off.
In the lodge, Muldoon, Malcolm, and Sattler discuss how to get the power back on while two raptors attempt to chew through the skylight ceiling above them. They decide they can create a distraction to allow Grant to get to the power box. Sattler offers to be the bait, asking the others not to tell Grant. Wu radios Grant and instructs him to leave the kids in the cafeteria and slowly make his way to the power box. Grant leaves, and immediately Lex begins demanding ice cream. Not much older himself, Tim foolishly leads her into the kitchen to find some. Tim begins looking through the fridge and freezer for ice cream when Lex says, “Timmy… something’s here” (368). A six-foot-tall velociraptor seems to have caught their scent. Tim lays out some steaks to try to lure it, but when he tries to hide, he is too late. The dinosaur spots him, and Tim remembers Grant’s trick of staying still. The raptor eats the first steak but rejects the other two and starts moving closer to Tim and Lex. Tim can “see the crusted blood on the claws of the hand” (371) and smell its carnivorous odor. The raptor walks into the freezer, seeming to smell something, and Tim manages to close the door on it. It begins thrashing violently against the door, roaring loudly. Lex finds a pin to stick in the door and lock it, and the two children manage to save their own lives. They make their way to the control room and Tim discovers the computers are on. Lex finds a radio and Muldoon asks Tim to try and use the computers to get the power back on. He and Lex fiddle around with it, not really sure what they are doing, but they manage to get the video surveillance up so they can see what is happening in the lodge.
Meanwhile, Wu instructs Grant through the maintenance building and down a ladder into “the pit” (365). He reaches the generator and switches it on, but nothing happens. Wu suspects it might be a blocked pipe and tells Grant how to unclog it. After completing this task, Gennaro pulls up outside the building and picks up Grant.
At the lodge, Wu begins pondering dinosaur behavior and the unpredictability of it. Deep in thought, he stands in front of an open door, and in a flash a raptor jumps down behind him and attacks. Wu is devoured alive as Sattler and Muldoon watch in horror. Sattler begins running again, trying to distract the raptors from Grant and Gennaro’s return, but the raptors seem to be on their way to the visitor center. She makes her way up to the roof to try and get inside the lodge, but the door up there is locked. Suddenly, two raptors appear behind her, and she jumps off the roof into the nearby pool. Harding opens the roof door to let her in and is nearly attacked.
Part 6, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Grid”
Tim frantically tries to get the power back on, pressing button after button while Lex yells at him to go faster. The raptors are on the other side of the door, and Tim is running out of time. Lex pulls him off the chair, alerting him to the dinosaurs coming down the hallway. She and Tim make a run for a nearby dead guard, grab his key card, and slip into a nearby room as “the raptors hissed and charged” (391). Meanwhile, Muldoon thinks the lodge has about three minutes before the raptors break through the skylight.
Part 6, Chapter 3 Summary: “Lodge”
The group sits in the lodge waiting for a radio or the power to go on as they watch the raptors above them. Malcolm comments on how ugly they are, and Hammond ironically says, “Who could have imagined it would turn out this way” (392). Both Sattler and Malcolm point out that Malcolm did in fact predict it. He goes off on yet another rant about Hammond’s crucial mistake, telling him he can “make a boat but not the ocean” (392). In other words, Hammond’s hopes to control nature were utterly futile and foolish. Hammond plays dumb again, acting like he has no clue what Malcolm is talking about.
Meanwhile, Grant is trying to get into the visitor center to save the kids, but the security system is restored, and the doors are locked. Tim and Lex find themselves in the nursery, and the door is not properly closed. Two raptors get in, and Tim throws the baby velociraptor at them to distract them. The adults eat the baby, and Lex and Tim are shocked, but it gives them enough time to get out through a back door. They enter the DNA extraction lab, where Grant finds them, accompanied by Gennaro.
Grant sends the kids and Gennaro off while he shuts himself in the lab. He makes his way to the hatchery, hoping the raptors will follow him: “He had devoted his whole life to studying dinosaurs. Now he would see how much he really knew” (397). He finds some containers of “biogenic toxins” (396) and some syringes. He grabs a large dinosaur egg, inserts the syringe into the egg, and rolls it across the floor towards the raptors. Grant does this three times, with the third egg finally catching the attention of one of the dinosaurs. It chomps down on the egg, releasing the poison, and begins flailing and retching. It begins seizing on the floor, dying very slowly, as two other raptors look on. One attempts to start eating the dying raptor, and the dying raptor bites its neck. Grant knows he only has to kill one more, and at that moment Sattler radios in to check on him. He asks her to keep talking and throws the radio across the room. The raptor goes over to inspect it, and Grant jabs it with a final syringe. Gennaro and the kids come in, grab Grant, and they all head to control together.
Part 6, Chapter 4 Summary: “Control”
The group reaches control and Tim is finally able to reset the power grid. The electricity in the lodge is restored, and the raptors above the skylight are instantly electrocuted as Malcolm and Muldoon cheer. Grant is still worried about the ship, and Tim sees on the monitor that it is near dock. He searches for the phone number and attempts to call them, but when Tim gets through and starts yelling at them not to dock the ship, the man on the other end thinks he is just “some damn kid” (406) and that they must be the victims of a prank. Gennaro picks up the phone and tells the man he is in violation of the “Uniform Maritime Act” (407), forcing the ship to return. When Grant asks what that is, Gennaro replies, “Who the hell knows?” (407). They see the ship turning and around; Gennaro thinks the tough part is over, but Grant believes it has just begun.
Part 6 Analysis
The two days spent in Jurassic Park have had many climaxes and moments of tension, and the group of survivors are not through it yet. The iteration begins with Malcolm’s warning, “System recovery may prove impossible” (353), as the fractals become smaller and thus the shape more complex. Hammond’s moments of irony are seemingly endless, and when he finally seems to be willing to admit that things went wrong, he still cannot accept that it was the likely result. Malcolm reminds him that he calculated disaster before the park was even built, but Hammond, as usual, acts as if Malcolm’s philosophy is too complex for him to understand. Malcolm offers yet another philosophical analogy: “You can make an airplane, but you can’t make the air” (392). He is telling Hammond that his attempts to control nature are completely unrealistic and deluded.
After Lex and Tim are left alone in the visitor center, they both prove themselves to be brave fighters in the face of absolute danger. Although they are only children, they show the same courage and skill that the adult survivors do. This, along with Tim’s knowledge of dinosaurs and Lex’s ability to look disgust in the face, is what allows them to live through an experience that most children would not. By the end of the sixth iteration, the story arc is winding down as the power is restored, the raptors are killed, and the boat is radioed back to the island.
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