Arrogance Leads to Severe Mistakes: Iteration Five

Flaws in the system will now become severe.

When last we left, the park was still recovering from a system shutdown, but things hadn't reached total disaster yet. Yes, the T-Rex has already attacked but power was restored. People have died but everything isn't quite as dire as it could be. The fences have been repaired rather quickly, and no one particularly cares that Nedry and Regis are dead because no one liked them anyway.  

Now comes the part where things begin to escalate beyond repair. You could say we've already reached that point, but there is still that glimmer of hope that perhaps they could repair the park. Perhaps they could save lives if only they could get the fences up in time, and the T-Rex back in its own paddock. Grant and the kids are still in the park but, by the end of iteration four, they seem to have escaped the worst of it. They are well on their way back to the control room and lodge.

Iteration five begins with Muldoon and Gennaro finding a T-Rex kill and, shortly there after, Nedry's body. This enables them to obtain the weaponry needed to dart the T-Rex. Things are beginning to look up for the park's management. At this moment, Crichton reveals two key points: both the T-Rex and Muldoon are hunting at the same time. 

Throughout this part of the novel, Crichton frequently cuts back and forth between Grant and the kids, and Muldoon and the others. He even goes so far as to show a sort of cause and effect relationship between some events. Without them even knowing it, Muldoon is desperately close to finding Grant and the kids. They could already be back inside the control room if only they had motion sensors near the river. With this fact, Malcolm takes the opportunity to remind us that only 92% of the island is covered by the motion sensors, implying that Grant and the kids as well as the T-Rex must be within the last 8%. While this is nothing earth shattering, it's just another factor showing Hammond that his system is imperfect. He was never in control. What he considered a minor problem has turned into a key factor in their inability to gain control once more.

Now comes the part I've been waiting for the entire novel: the aviary. I won't go into it much here but suffice it to say that while it's short, I think it'll definitely succeed in making your heart pound. It's a new development, one I know I certainly didn't expect when I first read the novel. Just when Grant and the kids have survived this encounter though, the freaking T-Rex rears its ugly head again. This time however, Crichton shows us something new. It's disgusting. It's unaccounted for. It shows us that perhaps the T-Rex is not the stupid lug Hammond and the rest would have us believe.

After achieving some success in their latest goals, Arnold and Muldoon are in for a major curve ball. The systems go down, again. Even with it being broad daylight, everyone begins to panic the second the lights go out. Muldoon, calm as ever, opens the shades but it's more than apparent that things will not power up so easily this time. Unlike before, Muldoon knows exactly what're they're up against.

"Fine. Then go with everybody to the lodge." Muldoon turned away. "That's it, everybody. Now move."

Hammond whined, "But what are you going to do to my animals?"

"That's not really the question, Mr. Hammond," Muldoon said. "The question is what are they going to do to us."

They literally sat and watched the last of their power go out without the slightest ability to prevent it. We begin to understand that the park employees had a grace period. For hours they had a chance to truly fix their problem and they completely missed it. Even now though, Hammond is more concerned about the dinosaurs than he is for his still-missing grandchildren and his own life.

Crichton has reserved the true terror embodied by the velociraptors up until to this very point. For the entire novel, Muldoon has made audible and inaudible comments about how good it is that the raptors haven't escaped. He has mentally gone over how terrible it would be if they did. And his fears are realized. They are out because Arnold and the rest were so arrogant as to not even go over every single detail to make sure the park was running as it should on the most basic level: it's electricity. This one oversight, this one mistake, will cost them. It has already cost them. In short, iteration five is nothing more than a complete escalation of events. They've traveled up hill. Crichton has reached the peak of the novel's crisis. Now everything will have to come crashing down and people will certainly die in the process.

They listened to the radio. "It sounds like a war out there."

"The raptors got out," Hammond said.

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