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.
Part 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 7: “Seventh Configuration”
Part 7, Chapter 1 Summary: “Departure”
The boat the team finds is in remarkably good shape. They drive it down the jungle river and through the cave that Sarah Harding came in when she arrived on the island. When the boat hits the open ocean, Levine relaxes for the first time. He begins to marvel over their discovery of the mythic Lost World. Malcolm points out the island was anything but a pure example of a dinosaur ecosystem. Scientists had upended the island’s ecosystem. By feeding the first-generation dinosaurs the relatively cheap protein found in sheep, those dinosaurs had been fed a toxic virus, prions, that infected the feces and in turn most of the ecosystem. That, Malcolm points out, is why so few of the dinosaurs survive into adulthood and why there were so many predators as they fed on the piled-up carcasses. Hardly an unspoiled lost world. “Human beings as so destructive,” Malcolm says, “I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague […] we destroy things so well that sometimes I think that’s our function” (415).
But Thorne objects to such a bleak vision: “You feel the way the boat moves? That’s the sea. That’s real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That’s real. Life is wonderful” (416). The team heads to Puerto Cortes and then to home.
Part 7 Analysis
The closing section is a single chapter—the team makes their way to the open ocean and to freedom. Levine understands the implications of the decision years earlier to feed the dinosaurs with cheap sheep proteins. The dinosaurs are doomed—even now there are more predators then prey and those dinosaurs who feed on the waste of the dinosaurs who have died from the toxin only pass the toxin on to the dinosaurs that, in turn, hunt them.
It is a closed cycle. Levine values the time on the island as his chance to observe a “perfect Lost World” (414), an observation so ironic that Malcolm cannot resist deflating Levine’s grandiose assessment. The sheep toxin will destroy the animals over time, which refutes Malcolm’s theory that a species elects its own extinction. He is left only with the assessment that extinction must remain at heart a “great mystery” (415).
The ever-practical Jack Thorne offers the novel’s closing affirmation. As he steers the boat out into the safety of the open ocean, he is annoyed by the dueling scientists. He dismisses them as dreamers who every 200 years or so decide their last theory about the world is absurd. An engineer, a pragmatist, and a survivalist, Thorne gives the book its closing optimism. Life, he tells them, is “wonderful” (416), the here, the now—the water slapping against the sides of the boat, the salty breeze, the warmth of the sun. That is the only reality anyone of us has. There “isn’t really anything else” (416).
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By Michael Crichton
