Characters and Power

Year 9 HEAP • Novel: Jurassic Park • Character

The characters in Jurassic Park are not only personalities. They occupy positions in a system: owner, scientist, contractor, lawyer, warden, visitor, child. Their power to act, warn or refuse depends on where they sit.

Power map

Character or group	Position	What they want	What limits them
John Hammond	Owner and visionary	To open the park and prove it works.	His confidence, investment and reluctance to see failure.
Alan Grant	Palaeontologist and visitor	To understand the animals and protect the children.	Limited knowledge of the park's systems.
Ellie Sattler	Palaeobotanist and visitor	To understand the ecology and act ethically.	Limited authority within the park.
Ian Malcolm	Mathematician and critic	To warn that the system cannot be controlled.	His certainty and the others' dismissal.
Dennis Nedry	Computer contractor	More money and recognition.	Resentment, debt and the park's dependence on him.
Robert Muldoon	Game warden	To contain the animals and keep people safe.	Limited staff and authority.
Donald Gennaro	Lawyer and investor representative	To assess risk and protect the investment.	Commercial pressure and limited scientific knowledge.
Henry Wu	Geneticist	To solve technical problems and improve the product.	The ethical limits of his role.
Lex and Tim	Children and visitors	To survive and understand what is happening.	Age, dependence and limited information.

Hammond

Hammond is often described as a showman, but his role is more specific: he is the person who converts scientific possibility into a commercial attraction. He genuinely believes the park is a gift, and that belief makes him slow to recognise the cost. His authority is centralised, but his understanding is not.

He controls the money, the guest list and the timeline.
He treats experts as advisers rather than decision-makers.
He interprets warnings as pessimism or a lack of vision.
He is attached to the park as a personal achievement.

Grant and Sattler

Character	Function in the argument	Limitation
Grant	Represents palaeontological knowledge and practical care for the animals.	He knows dinosaurs but not the park's systems or business.
Sattler	Represents ecological thinking and ethical attention.	She has less institutional power than the men who built the park.

Both are experts, but their expertise is not the expertise the park most needs. The park needs people who understand software, organisational behaviour and risk. That gap is part of the novel's argument.

Malcolm

Malcolm is the novel's most visible critic. He argues that complex systems cannot be fully predicted or controlled. He is useful because he names the problem, but he is not a reliable mouthpiece. He can be theatrical, dismissive and more interested in being right than in helping.

What Malcolm sees	What Malcolm may miss
The park's dependencies and unpredictability.	The practical knowledge of the staff who run it.
The commercial pressure to open early.	His own enjoyment of the performance.
The limits of prediction.	Specific ways to reduce harm.

Nedry

Nedry is the character most directly responsible for the immediate systems failure, but the novel makes his betrayal intelligible. He is underpaid, under-recognised and essential. The park's dependence on one contractor is a structural problem, not only a personal vice.

Responsibility

Question	Hammond	Wu	Nedry	Malcolm
Who authorised the park?	Yes	No	No	No
Who designed the animals?	Commissioned	Yes	No	No
Who built the systems?	Funded	Partly	Yes	No
Who warned of failure?	No	Partly	No	Yes
Who could have stopped it?	Yes	Partly	No	No

Character analysis

Question	Your notes
Which character has the most power, and which has the least?
What does each character want, and what do they fear?
Which character changes most, and how do we know?
Which character represents a system rather than a personality?
Who is blamed, and is the blame fair?
Whose perspective is missing?

Common errors

Hero and villain. Reducing the novel to good people and bad people.
Malcolm as author. Treating every statement by Malcolm as the novel's final view.
Ignoring structure. Blaming Nedry without the park's dependence on him.
Character as theme label. Saying a character "represents greed" without showing how.
Forgetting the children. Treating Lex and Tim as decoration rather than as people with limited power.

Next, examine the novel's themes and motifs.