Tools of Characterization
Characterization in Jurassic Park
Actions
A Good Deed for the Day
The characters in Jurassic Park are defined by their acts of heroism…or lack thereof. Most of the characters in the movie can be considered "good" guys, and they all commit good deeds. Ian Malcolm distracts the T. rex with a flare, Ellie Sattler turns on the power in the power shed, and Alan Grant leads the children across the island, arguably the "good-est" deed of them all.
Just because characters do something heroic doesn't mean they'll survive, though. Ray attempts to turn on the power and falls victim to a sneaky Velociraptor. And Muldoon manages to maneuver a Jeep from a T. rex and defend Sattler from raptors, but still gets his thighs bitten off by the clever one. Still, because they did good deeds, it makes us feel a little sad about the loss of these characters.
Finally, there are the characters who are bad in comparison. Dennis Nedry steals dinosaur embryos and talks smack to a dinosaur: "I'm gonna run you over when I come back down," he says to a Dilophosaurus. He probably regrets that shortly before the dinosaur eats him, though the creature probably would have killed him either way. The worst behavior, however, is the lawyer who abandons the children with the T. rex. He meets the worst fate, getting eaten off the toilet by a T. rex—and no one is sad to lose him.
Occupation
Stay in School, Kids
You'd better be rich and/or intellectual (or related to a rich intellectual) if you want to survive Jurassic Park. (Being white helps, too.) In Jurassic Park, the survivors are the archaeologists, the mathematician, and the rich evil old guy. All the working-class people—the computer programmers, the game warden, the poor black wrangler at the beginning—become dinosaur fodder.
The only exception is the lawyer. But everyone hates lawyers, so many people probably take pleasure watching him get munched off the toilet because of his occupation alone. Hammond even calls him a "blood-sucking lawyer," equating him with the carnivorous creatures roaming the park.
Type of Being
Meat is Murder
People: good. Dinosaurs: bad.
There, that was easy.
Okay, Jurassic Park isn't that simple, as you've learned from our "Character Roles" section. There are good people and bad people, and there are good dinosaurs and bad dinosaurs. The movie makes a distinction between herbivores ("Veggie-saurus") and the carnivorous ones. No one gets accidentally stomped on by a Brachiosaurus or impaled by a Triceratops—only the meat-eating predators are the dangerous ones.