51 pages 1 hour read

Michael Crichton

The Lost World

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1995

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Symbols & Motifs

Eggs and Hatchlings

Much attention is given to the nests of the island’s dinosaurs. Dr. Levine is fascinated by the gentleness and care the T. Rex parents lavish on their eggs and their hatchlings. Eddie is too taken by the tiny dinosaurs that he cannot bring himself to kill the wounded baby and takes it back to the trailer despite the risks. For different reasons, the crew from Biosyn are also fascinated by the eggs save they see them as commodities that can be taken and then patented and then developed as a potential goldmine investment. Whatever their motivation, scientific curiosity, compassion, or greed, characters are much taken by the eggs and the hatchlings of the island’s dinosaurs.

The problem is that the dinosaurs on Isla Sorna are doomed. The first-generation dinosaurs had been poisoned by the food given to them by InGen and that the toxins are working their way through the ecosystem. The focus on the eggs then becomes a powerful symbol of the determination of life to continue. After all, these eggs were not artificially created in InGen’s elaborate laboratories.

The chapters set in the nests offer gentle moments of authentic familiar bonding. As he watches the parents feed the tiny babies, Thorne, a gruff man not given to shows of emotion, is delighted.

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