56 pages • 1 hour read
Michael Crichton, James PattersonEruption
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Man Versus Nature
Content Warning: This section features graphic depictions of death. The source text includes offensive portrayals of Indigenous Hawaiian people.
Man Versus Nature is a popular literary theme that explores humanity’s frailty when struggling to survive in the natural environment. This theme is central to works such as Moby Dick by Herman Melville and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. In Eruption, the Mauna Loa volcano acts as the primary antagonist and challenge that humanity has to struggle against and overcome. This theme appears in other Crichton novels such as Jaws (1974). The authors develop the theme in Eruption through the focus on the overwhelming might and strength of the volcanic eruption and its contrast with the futility of human efforts in controlling it.
The protagonist Mac and the members of his team are explicit in describing the indomitable power of Mauna Loa, “the largest volcano in the world” (30), and volcanoes generally. As the text notes, “[Mauna Loa’s] eruption in 1984 wasn’t particularly large but it produced enough lava to bury Manhattan to a depth of thirty feet” (69). In addition to being enormous, the volcano is also unpredictable. Despite having access to all kinds of scientific data, Mac and his team do not know exactly when it will erupt, and they are caught off-guard when, during the eruption, lava begins to flow from the summit caldera of Mauna Loa. The narrative describes the results of the eruption in gruesome detail as people are caught by the power of the volcano. For instance, the entire town of Nā‘ālehu is wiped off the map, and its people are unable to escape. Some of the eruption’s effects are stunning. For example, “at one point, the ocean had gone as smooth as glass” from the heat of the lava hitting the salt water (417). As Kenny Wong, the HVO’s programmer, put it, “Never this much lava, never this much vog […] This is our perfect storm” (403). The volcano asserts its indomitable power through an eruption that releases lava (molten rock), toxic gases, and rocky projectiles.
The protagonists, Mac and Rivers, and their teams, do their best to attempt to control and mitigate the effects of the volcanic eruption. They use lots of manpower and technology to dig dikes and ponds, spray seawater to stop and redirect the lava flow, and time explosions to vent the volcano. However, the early chapter when Mac reads a DARPA report assessing the viability of using explosions to vent the volcano foreshadows the futility of their efforts. The report concludes that this approach’s “likelihood of success is no greater than chance—that is, it is entirely ineffective” (79). Ultimately, the Ice Tube containing the canisters of highly toxic material is spared not because of their efforts but because a basalt wall formed after a previous explosion of the neighboring volcano, Mauna Kea, redirected the law flow. In this conflict between Man and Nature, Nature spares Man, rather than Man defeating it through action.
Displays of Courage and Recklessness
In Eruption, many of the characters make risky or questionable decisions that show the difference between courage and recklessness. In the text, the authors portray taking a risk to save lives or learn important information as courageous. They contrast these actions with risk-taking for selfish, personal reasons or to get media attention, which are reckless and foolish. Broadly speaking, the protagonists take courageous risks whereas the antagonists take reckless risks.
The narrative first explores the difference between courageous and reckless behavior in an opening scene when Jake Rogers, an ex-navy pilot, breaks the rules about staying at least 1,500 feet above volcano openings to take a stringer, a freelance local on-the-ground reporter, to the Kīlauea caldera. The stringer is “pushing for exclusive footage of the new eruption” (42). This is a selfish motivation; he is not interested in safety or science but simply wants to advance his career in the media. The text punishes this reckless behavior when the helicopter crashes. In response, Mac decides to go in to save them. While some of his staff, particularly Jenny Kimura, have reservations about his decision not to wait for the Coast Guard, ultimately, Mac saves the pilot and the stringer’s lives. Mac’s risky behavior is portrayed as heroic and courageous, particularly because Mac seeks reassurance from Jenny that the actions will not be disclosed to the media. Mac eschewing the media spotlight, which would likely hail him as a hero, further underscores the notion that true courageousness does not seek publicity.
Eruption further shows this dynamic in the tensions between the Cutlers, Brett, and Mac. The Cutlers and Brett actively court the spotlight. In doing so, they often make reckless decisions to further their careers. Twice they go up in aircraft to get a closer look at the volcanic eruption. The first time results in the death of the videographer, Morgan; the second time results in their deaths. Their deaths represent a form of “poetic justice,” a literary device in which vice or bad behaviors are punished.
However, it is important to note that not all of the deaths during the volcanic explosion are poetic justice for reckless, selfish behavior. Indeed, some of the people who die are the ones who act courageously to try and save lives. A key example of this is the death of Sergeant Iona who is digging out canals to try and divert the lava flow even after the eruption began. He dies on duty after getting caught by the lava. Upon learning of his death, Rivers thinks “[Iona] died not just for his country but for the whole world” (386). This demonstrates that, unlike the Brett and the Cutlers, Sergeant Iona died performing an act of bravery.
The Challenge of Collective Action in a Crisis
In Eruption, the leaders, Mac and General Rivers, struggle to get people to work together to address the crisis. They must manage the egos of those who are looking to take over leadership and direction of the response. They also have to get ordinary people to follow protocol and trust their leadership. An additional challenge is their need to share information with the public carefully; they want to provide enough information so that people can get to safety without provoking panic. All of these are aspects of The Challenge of Collective Action in Crisis.
Mac is used to working on his own and making decisions independently as director of the HVO. However, when General Rivers arrives, he has to learn to work in partnership with him. Rivers himself also has to learn to cede to some of Mac’s authority. As Mac observes, “Mac could see how difficult it was for a man who was so powerful […] to give up control like this” (245).
However, their partnership is not easily replicated amongst other would-be leaders of the eruption response team. Tako, Briggs, Brett, and the Cutlers all have their own agendas that come into conflict with the leadership. Arrogant billionaire Brett goes behind Mac’s back to Rivers and tells him, “We need to eliminate the middlemen” (256). The Cutlers are likewise motivated by their ego to go directly to the media to stoke panic in the hopes of gaining more control of the response planning. Rivers must handle these selfish maneuvers. However, he is not entirely successful, and he is unable to stop Brett and the Cutlers from going up in an aircraft amid the eruption.
Mac and Rivers also struggle to get the ordinary people on board with their plan. An early indication of the difficulty Rivers faces in this domain is when some of his soldiers fail to properly decontaminate following the cleanup of an Agent Black spill in the Ice Tube. This leads to the spread of Agent Black on Hawai‘i. Following this failure on the part of his team, Rivers reflects to himself, “what if we control the lava in the end at the same time a different kind of black death starts to seep across the island like a plague, all because of a sergeant under my command?” (334). Later, the locals express discontent with Mac and Rivers, seeing them as white leadership seeking to take control of their island. Their response dismays Lono, who thinks, “Us against them […] when it’s really supposed to be us against the volcano” (284). Although eventually Rivers and Mac mostly get the locals on board with their plan, this tension is one of the major challenges leadership faces in trying to get people from different positions and perspectives to work together to confront a crisis.
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