The Passage (2010) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• Tim Fanning: One of the scientists on the original expedition. Also known as Zero.
• Major Greer: An officer in the Second Expeditionary Forces, Army of the Republic of Texas
• Giles Babcock: Death row inmate recruited as human subject for Project NOAH.
• Billie: Female aide to Olson Hand and citizen of the Haven.
• Colonel Niles Coffee: Known to the First Colony as "the Colonel", he is the adopted father of Alicia Donadio
• Jude Cripp: Citizen of the Haven described as a man with "fierce blue eyes, a chin that looked like it had been chiseled from stone and aide to Olson Hand.
• Olson Hand: Head of the Haven
• Caleb (Hightop): Engineer who was really close to Zander, he has a strong bond with Alicia and develops one with Peter as the story progresses
• Galen Strauss: Second Captain of the Watch who is married to Mausami Patal
• Jimmy Molyneau: First Colony Watcher
• Mausami Patal: Sanjay's daughter and First Colony Watcher. She is married to Galen Strauss but in love with Theo
• Hollis: Arlo's brother and Watcher for First Colony
• Ida Jaxon: Known as "Auntie", she is the oldest member of First Colony and survivor of Dark Night. She is First Colony's historian. Arrived at First Colony as a child, escaping the viral outbreak
• Sajay Patal: Head of the First Colony Household.
• Amy Harper Bellafonte: Add a description of this character.
• Jonas Lear: A professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University, he is the organizer of the expedition to Bolivia in search of the virus. Afterward he becomes the chief scientist for Project NOAH.
• Bradford "Brad" Joseph Wolgast: FBI Special Agent, one of the men dispatched to kidnap Amy Bellafonte, and who initially obtains agreement from human subjects recruited for Project NOAH. As the story progresses he develops into a father figure for Amy. Brad was named after one of Cronin's friends.
• Phil Doyle: FBI Special Agent and Wolgast's partner in attaining felons for Project NOAH.
• Colonel Sykes: Wolgast's immediate supervisor and military leader of Project NOAH.
• Anthony Lloyd Carter: Death row inmate recruited as human subject for Project NOAH.
• Lawrence Grey: A janitor (one of the sweeps) for Project NOAH. Pedophile
• Richards: Nonprofessional employee of Project NOAH.
• Sister Lacey Antoinette Kudoto: A nun from Sierra Leone
• Peter Jaxon: Also known as Peter of Souls, the Man of Days, and the One Who Stood, he is a 21-year-old descendant of one of the signatories of the One Law of the First Colony. In the colony he is in the Watch Trade as First Watch.
• Alicia Donadio: Nicknamed "Lish". Last of the Donadio family, raised by the Colonel and youngest captain of First Colony.
• Theo Jaxon: Peter's older brother, he is a Watcher officer (Captain) of First Colony.
• Sara Fisher: Michael's older sister, she is a nurse and member of First Colony.
• Michael Fisher: Known in First Colony as "Circuit", he is Sara's younger brother and First Engineer of Light and Power for the community.
• Arlo Wilson: First Colony Watcher and musician, brother of Hollis Wilson
• Jeanette: Amy's mother who abandons her at the convent.
• Bill Reynolds: Amy's father who sold combines and harvesters for a living.

Quotes edit see section history

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• “It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.”

• “To die. That is why we live, to die.”

  Brad Wolgast

• “Like the idea of time was inside him, in each cell of his body, and time wasn't an ocean, like somebody had told him once, but a million tiny wicks of flame that would never be extinguished.”

• “Grief was a place, Sara understood, where a person went alone. It was like a room without doors, and what happened in that room, all the anger and the pain you felt, was meant to stay there, nobody’s business but yours.”

• “The memories poured through her like water. Of a house in the snow and a lake and a carousel wtih lights and the feel of his big hand wrapping her own on a night when they soared together beneath the eaves of heaven.”

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• So perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.

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• A baby wasn’t an idea, as love was an idea. A baby was a fact. It was a being with a mind and a nature, and you could feel about it any way you liked, but a baby wouldn’t care. Just by existing, it demanded that you believe in a future: the future it would crawl in, walk in, live in. A baby was a piece of time; it was a promise you made that the world made back to you. A baby was the oldest deal there was, to go on living.

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• All those years, waiting for the Army, and it turns out the Army is us.

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• Before she became the Girl from Nowhere—the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years—she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.

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• It was what you did, Wolgast understood; you started to tell a story about who you were, and soon enough the lies were all you had and you became that person.

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• It would be fought in the name of Allah or Kurdish nationalism or Jews for Jesus or the New York Yankees—the subjects hadn’t changed, they never would, all coming down, after you’d boiled away the bullshit, to somebody’s quarterly earnings report and who got to sit where—but now the war was everywhere, metastasizing like a million maniac cells run amok across the planet, and everyone was in it.

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• What were the living dead, Wolgast thought, but a metaphor for the misbegotten march of middle age? It was possible, he understood, for a person’s life to become just a long series of mistakes, and that the end, when it came, was just one more instance in a chain of bad choices. The thing was, most of these mistakes were actually borrowed from other people. You took their bad ideas and, for whatever reason, made them your own.

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• Courage is easy, when the alternative is getting killed. It’s hope that’s hard.

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• Part II - The Year of Zero Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Part III - The Last City

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Haven: Another colony of humans south of Las Vegas with a reality more nefarious than its names implies.
• First Colony: Community of First Families and Walkers located in California (declared an independent country shortly after the viral epidemic) near Los Angeles
• Telluride, Colorado: Site of Operation NOAH
• Bolivia: The source of the virus in its natural state.
• Iowa: The state of Amy's birth.

Organizations edit see section history

• United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID): The financial backers behind a scientific expedition to Bolivia to investigate the original virus.
• Household: Governing body of First Colony consisting of one member from the original families, known as the Builders
• The Many: Virals led and influenced by Babcock
• The Twelve: The twelve original virals infected at USAMRIID.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Sweeps: Nickname given to the custodial staff at Project NOAH.
• Mercy: A mercy killing of a First Colony citizen exposed to the virus.
• Walkers: The second wave of Virus-free humans to come into First Colony after the Builders fifty-odd years ago after the Baja settlements were overrun or any migratory human not in a sanctuary.
• Flyers/Smokes/Dracs/Virals/Jumps: Names for those transformed by the virus
• Dark Night: An event in First Colony's history when an earthquake took out the power grid resulting in the death of 162 citizens when the virals breached the perimeter.
• Time Before: Before the bioengineered virus was accidentally released from the lab into the world and became an epidemic.
• Slims: The dried out or skeletal corpses of deceased humans.
• Strags: The term in the Army of the Republic of Texas for walkers encountered up by the military.
• A.V.: Years after virals/virus; ie 90 A.V.
• Taken up: The term used for those who do not get killed by an attack, but become infected and transform into a viral/smoke/drac/flyer.
• Dozers: Virals found out in the daylight.
• Pod: A group of usually three virals. A frequent viral travel formation.

Errata edit see section history

On page 201, 4th para. - "hand" should be "had"

Series & Lists edit see section history

Followed by The Twelve.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Justin Cronin (Author) - Cronin wrote the book with the help of his daughter, who asked her dad to "write a book about a girl who saves the world."

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3553 .R542P37
• Dewey: 813.54

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Mystery & Thrillers › Thrillers › Suspense
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Horror › Vampires
• Books › Mystery & Thrillers › Authors, A-Z › ( C )
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( C )

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Author's Website

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Books Cited by This Book edit see section history