51 pages • 1 hour read
Michael CrichtonThe Lost World
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Dr. Richard Levine
In the quartet of characters that make up the team that goes the Isla Sorna, the wealthy bespectacled Yale-trained zoologist Dr. Richard Levine represents the intellect. Physically lanky and gaunt (he resembles a praying mantis) Levine is fascinated by the myth of the Lost World. Driven by his curiosity over speciation and drawn to the island in the hopes of studying living dinosaurs, Levine regularly sets aside common sense to attend to the risky business of his observations. He puts all of the team members at risk because he only sees the animals as means of teaching alert observers. He travels to the island initially alone, and, in the process, makes inevitable the brutal death of his island guide. He never fully appreciates the efforts the others take to find him when he keeps disappearing to pursue his observations.
Arrogant and socially awkward (he is, in fact, widely disliked), living within his specialized world of intellectual pursuit, Levine has little interest in the living planet; he is far more interested in the past, which he studies with “obsessive intensity” (18). Given his fortune, Levine travels to the most remote corners of the world to investigate so-called aberrant forms, often tooling about in his flashy red Ferrari. His intellect, however, puts him at risk. When, in the last hours of the visit to the island, Levine finally sees the danger of the animals, he cannot handle it. He breaks down and has to be calmed by Sarah Harding. His obtuseness, however, is confirmed by his remarks on the boat when the team finally escapes the island: he rues leaving the island as a “perfect” Lost World, a remark so oblivious to reality that the others scoff.
Dr. Sarah Harding
When animal behaviorist Dr. Sarah Harding flies from Africa on short notice to help locate Dr. Richard Levine on Isla Sorna, she brings to the team her considerable resourcefulness and courage. She is young Kelly’s role model. Their chat about how women need to be strong and smart and never give in to a man’s skewed sense of the world impacts the young girl and defines Sarah’s character.
In her caring for Malcolm, her concern over Levine, and her mentoring of Kelly, Harding represents the heart. Initially drawn to the project because of her concern for the missing zoologist, Sarah Harding also helped Dr. Ian Malcolm in his recovery from injuries when the initial theme park went awry years before. She tends to Malcolm with gentleness and compassionate—particularly after the two are involved in the trailer showdown with the enraged tyrannosaurs and Sarah cleans out Malcolm’s wounds. She also observes the dinosaurs protecting their offspring and responds to the evidence of parental love and protectiveness.
However, Dr. Harding is also the novel’s superhero. She hunts down the raptors on the motorcycle; she hauls the wounded Malcolm out of the trailer as it dangles over the cliff; she survives Dodgson’s murder attempt by pulling herself through the treacherous ocean waves into the island’s cave. But nothing so reveals her stout heart and fierce strength than her decision to pretty much hand over Dodgson to the infuriated T. Rexes when he seeks the protective shelter with her under the Ford Explorer. Coolly, Sarah shoves the man out and watches without reaction as the great animal snatches Dodgson and hurries away with him—as we later learn to be fed alive to the baby T. Rexes.
Dr. Ian Malcolm
If Levine is the team’s intellect and Sarah Harding its heart and muscle, Ian Malcolm, mathematician, chaos theoretician, and philosopher, is the team’s spiritual essence. With his brooding eyes and his world-weary slouch, Malcolm, perpetually dressed in black, provides the broadest commentary on what the team observes in the animals. If Levine is concerned with what the dinosaurs are, Malcolm is more interested in what they represent.
Malcolm is a part of the action as the team moves deeper into more precarious encounters with the dinosaurs until he gets hurt, at which point he stands apart from the action to give what is happening a deeper meaning. He is certain that extinction is not caused by environmental disruptions but rather by a species deciding to act in a way that would ultimately lead to its destruction. At critical moments in the novel (including an entire chapter when Malcolm, under sedation, philosophizes on the implications of change) Malcolm indulge his predilection for philosophizing even when he is alone and talking to himself.
In the closing chapter, Malcolm provides a most ironic commentary on what they have witnessed at Site B. He never gets caught up in the action, the danger, the adventure. He is too much a philosopher. Perhaps, he argues as the team departs the island, extinction needs to remain a mystery. And because scientists can never know for certain why such catastrophes happen, humanity must always live on the edge of obliteration. The island animals, Malcolm knows, are doomed not by choice but rather by the careless intrusion of myopic humanity. “Human beings as so destructive,” a gloomy Malcolm argues. “I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague” (415).
Dr. Jack Thorne
Crichton gives this description of Dr. Ian Thorne: “Except for his wire-frame glasses, [Thorne] looked like he might be a retired prizefighter” (69). A retired engineering professor (he left his tenured position after butting heads for too long with less adventurous colleagues), Doc Thorne is now operating his own business, Thorne Mobile Field Systems, where he designs equipment with unique technical specifications. He has designed the battery-operated specially enhanced Explorer, the high hide tower, as well as the two research RVs. He bullies his team of technicians with the brusque immediacy of a man certain of what he wants.
On the island, he maintains order at moments of maximum confusion. Like a military leader, he heads directly into the fray when dinosaurs threaten. He carries whole pieces of equipment; he shoulders wounded members of his team; he understands when a solution requires immediate action. He dismisses Malcolm’s endless philosophizing and is impatient with theory. There is no substitute for engagement. Without regard for his own safety, it is Thorne who heads back to the RV when one trailer holding both Sarah Harding and Malcolm is dangling dangerously over the cliff. He rigs the winch system that suspends the trailer long enough for the two to get out while all the while fending off the enraged tyrannosaur parents.
Practical, hard-edged, resourceful, fearless, Thorne is grounded in the world that Levine finds fascinating and Malcolm finds distressing. Both scientists are so consumed by their perceptions, however, they lack the ability to appreciate the world’s beauty. The novel’s upbeat ending is given to Thorne. Thorne steers the boat safely off the island. Even as both Levine and Malcolm express their theories, Thorne reminds them, “You feel the way the boat moves? That’s the sea. That’s real.” He reminds them as the island vanishes behind them, “It’s a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air” (416). His sincerity stands in contrast to Levine’s callous egotism and Malcolm’s studied irony.
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By Michael Crichton
