Analysis of The Lost World by Michael Crichton Essay -- The Lost World

Analysis of The Lost World by Michael Crichton Michael Crichton's novel, The Lost World began with the exposition of a character who is infamous to Crichton's work, Ian Malcom. The entire introduction and prologue is about Malcom and his scientific views and theories. In a section of the book called 'Hypothesis';, Malcom discusses a theory of 'lost worlds'; - areas in which extinct beings may live, with Richard Levine, a man who's ideas were totally different from Malcoms. Levine and Malcom discuss a possible journey to an island that is suspected to be one of the so-called 'lost worlds';. At first, Malcom is reluctant and thinks that the idea is stupid. After much coaxing, Malcom agrees to go. Levine arrives on the island first, after a lot of useless chatter and talk and the introduction of two young characters, Arby and Kelley, who are students of Levine's and sometimes run errands for him. Almost immediately after they arrive, Levine and his assistant, Diego, begin to search for clues to what the science community calls 'aberrant forms';, which many people have spotted but have been unable to identify. They come to a stream bed, where they are attacked by a group of unidentifiable animals. They capture and kill Diego, and Levine is nearly killed. Malcom and his team of field researchers finally make it to the island - and Arby and Kelley stow away in one of the many high-tech trailers that they had taken on their expedition. After the first day or so goes smoothly, chaos breaks out. When three men, Dodgson, King, and Basselton decide to go to the island, thinking that no one has been there. They plan on stealing the dinosaur eggs and breeding them. In doing so, they cause a ruckus on the island, and the dinosaurs begin to lose their patience. They go on a killing spree, which is graphically described by Critchton as well as nearly killing Arby. The climax of the story comes when Malcom and Sarah Harding (one of his associates) get trapped in a trailer that is about to tumble off the ledge of a cliff. Luckily for them, they are saved by another of their colleagues, named Richard Thorn, saves them by using Dodgson's jeep (which they had thought was broken down, AND after they thought all three of the egg thieves were dead) and ties a rope to the trailer and miraculously saves them. The story isn't over yet, though. The group mi... ... putting together trailers for their expedition and they tell the boss that they are too weak and something could happen, but the boss ignores thim. It's so obvious, but it is foreshadowing. Also, another classic example of foreshadowing from the Jurassic Park series is the shaking and rumbling of the ground then a calm for a second or two before the t-rex attacks. Once again, obvious, but it's still an example of foreshadowing. All in all, this book was good even though I do not enjoy reading. Despite many things that I thought could have been clarified and in a lot of instances, were so dumb that they insulted me, I was entertained by the book. It had a little bit of everything†¦Mind games, action, gore and death, and what I thought was the best part of the entire book†¦Great characters. Between the most important characters, such as Malcom, to the lower-status ones such as Sarah Harding, or even Kelley and Arby's parents, who never actually appear†¦All of them were greatly put together. I might not be able to recommend this book to you if you are reading for pleasure, but if there was one book that you absolutely had to read, Michael Crichton's The Lost World has to be it.