Introduction
Vampires are
sexy. Throughout literature the vampire
has been endowed with a sexuality that can be seen across many narratives; Bram
Stoker’s Dracula, Anne Rice’s
creations in The Vampire Chronicles
and the range of vampires found in Buffy
the Vampire Slayer have all been sexual creatures, a defining aspect of the
genre. Margaret Carter states in her
essay on The Vampire in Icons of Horror and the Supernatural ‘vampire
fiction [is] suffused with a higher degree of explicit sexuality than found in
mainstream’ (Carter, 2007, p630) fiction and a cursory investigation makes this
evident, as does a similar examination of the explosion of television and
filmic vampires of the early Twenty-first Century. The popular TV series True Blood shows scenes of sexual intercourse between humans and
vampires from the outset and the hugely successful Twilight franchise shows the characters both abstaining from and
consummating a physical relationship between the two species. (For clarity,
humans and vampires will be referred to as different species throughout this
paper, although it is understood that the vampire is usually a mutation of the
human it used to be.) This is something
that the reader has come to expect from a vampire narrative, as is the presence
of a distinct personality; each of the vampire narratives mentioned so far
features vampires who are recognisable as individuals, with distinct character
traits.
Whilst usual, the
representation of the vampire as a sexual and individual creature is not the
only way that the species can be characterised and there are authors who have created
vampires which, although recognisable through traits such as the need to feed
on blood and stay out of the sunlight, are sufficiently removed from the
traditional expectations to facilitate a new reader experience; this is
something Justin Cronin attempted in his 2010 novel The Passage, the first in a planned trilogy. Marketed as a vampire narrative, this novel is, according to an SFX magazine review ‘an
exhilarating epic that easily rises above the flood of run-of-the-mill vampire
tales’ (Orion Publishing, 2010) which
explores the destruction of American Society and the post-apocalyptic remnants
of the civilization that is left behind.
It is understood, but not known indisputably, that the virus which
brings about this destruction spreads over the planet and causes worldwide
devastation; however, this paper will focus on American society as being razed,
as this is the setting explored through the text.
The Passage incorporates aspects from
several literary genres, including Gothic and Science Fiction as part of its
construction; this is a deliberate decision on the part of the author, who
‘wanted to write a book that had the attributes
of literary fiction – meaning good careful writing and characters with human
complexity – and that also operated simultaneously in a whole variety of genres
– from the post-apocalyptic to the western.’
(Stanford, 2010)
With
the vampire’s evolution into positive role models in fiction such as True Blood
and ‘vegetarian’ vampires of the Twilight franchise being dominant in recent
literature, the return of the antagonistic vampire preying on humanity in
Cronin’s work has clearly been successful; The Passage has topped the New York
Times bestseller list and the translation rights have, according to the Daily
Telegraph, been sold to at least 28 countries.
(Stanford, 2010) Cronin’s dark vampires allow him, and by extension the
reader, to explore the fears of society which are prominent in the early part
of the 21st Century and the novel attempts to ‘awaken its audience
from dogmatic slumber through hyperbole and melodrama’ (Edmundson, 1997,
p62/63) to the dangers of issues such as religious intolerance and political
apathy.
Setting the (Apocalyptic) Scene
The first portion of the novel, parts
one, two and three are concerned with the creation of Zero and The Twelve as
the original vampires, as well as charting the reasons behind the downfall of
American society. The second part of
this work tells of the post-apocalyptic world which shows ‘virals’ as the
dominant species and humans trying to survive in a hostile world of being
hunted, and features the more traditional gothic landscapes, which Fred Botting
describes as ‘desolate, alienating and full of menace.’ (Botting, 2010ed,
p2)
The opening sections show important
events leading up to the apocalypse and permits the recognition of contemporary
American society; this allows the reader to postulate on the way society is
headed and the ramifications of this and can be referred to as science fiction,
as this is, in part, defined as being ‘realistic speculation about possible
future events.’ (Heinlein, 1957, p22) Whilst there are other novels which deal with
the same subject, (that of a virus which destroys civilization) for instance The
Stand by Stephen King and Robert Matheson’s I am Legend, this novel features
the events leading up to and including the release of the virus which causes
the apocalypse and the time after rather than the actuality of the downfall of
civilization, which Neil McRobert of the University of Sterling says is an
innovation by Cronin and ‘affords a heightened pathos to the journey taken by
the future survivors as they, like the reader, discover the residue of past
trauma in their travels across the empty continent’ (McRobert, 2010) whilst still giving the reader a level of comprehension
that the characters do not have; that is, they (the reader) can understand the cause of the virus and its initial
outbreak.
As stated earlier, there is a
distinct science fiction motif running through the initial part of the novel
and this is primarily concerned with the progression of science within society
and the consequences of this progression.
Stobbart asserts in her paper on American author Ayn Rand that ‘one
denominator remains present throughout [the genre] regardless of the variety of
science fiction - technology’; (Stobbart, 2010) and this is certainly true of The
Passage; the virals in The Passage are not the supernatural vampires of the
more traditional vampire narrative. These
vampire-like creatures are created by the American military’s ‘Project Noah,’
which involves using death row inmates and a genetically modified virus, found
in Bolivian bats, to try to create a soldier that will enable America to win
the war it is currently fighting. What
the experiments create are ‘the Twelve,’ the precursor to virals and the
original vampires of this narrative. The
genetic mutation that creates the Twelve allows them to go through ‘the
sickness and the Becoming’ (Cronin, 2010, p569) which in turn permits them to
be part of the collective that is Zero and the Twelve, ‘the
Babcock-Morrison-Chavez-Baffes-Turrell-Winston-Sosa-Echols-Lambright-Martinez-Reinhardt-Carter.’
(Cronin, 2010, p569) More than this however, the virus also permits each member
of the Twelve to control a portion of the ‘Many,’ the virals that spread
throughout the country and in turn infect others, causing the apocalypse.
Mark Edmundson notes in Nightmare on
Main Street that apocalyptic Gothic ‘haunt the society at large’ (Edmundson,
1997, p23) and that like Frankenstein, ‘through technology, what we create will
turn on us’ (Edmundson, 1997, p23) This
is exactly what occurs in The Passage; the military, having discovered this
virus to exist, engineer to have it brought to America, where they, like
Frankenstein before them, attempt to create a perfect being and the results are
catastrophic, ‘victims are multiple: women, children and innocent men go first,
but ultimately the creator himself […] has to pay the full price.’ (Edmundson, 1997, p23) Although this is a
common theme within Gothic Science Fiction, there is a particular relevance in
21st Century society for readers and has been a theme explored
through a number of texts and films since the fin-de-millennium. Scientific advancements are reported in the
media to be happening on a staggering scale; it is possible to create a
living being and the military are constantly striving for new ways to
give them superiority over an enemy who, in some instances, is not afraid to
die for the cause that is believed in. Although
seemingly fantastical, it is not far-fetched to imagine such a scenario in
contemporary civilisation, and this is as Edmundson asserts ‘one of the common
functions of Gothic, to turn the vague but insistent fear of what will happen
in the future, into suspense’.(Edmundson, 1997, p12) Having the setting as being the US is
particularly apt for showing societal collapse; in that if America was to
become instable and civilization collapse, this would have a detrimental effect
on the rest of the world. They are the
dominant superpower in the world as the 2008 economic disaster showed; it was a
financial crisis in the US housing market that began the global difficulties
that are still being felt three years later.
A New Breed of Vampire?
The vampires in The Passage, known
in the fictional post-apocalyptic America as ‘virals’ are split into two distinct
sub-species; there are the originally created vampires, Zero and the twelve and
also their progeny, the virals - those who roam the landscape searching for
fresh blood. These virals have some
similar characteristics to the traditional vampire; a fact Cronin signals
explicitly during the second part of the novel when he has the characters watch
Todd Browning’s Dracula adaptation and they recognise Dracula as being of the
same species as the virals. (Cronin, 2010, p655-658) However, these monsters are
more than representations of the Dracula-esque vampire; these beings also
incorporate characteristics of another Gothic creature, the zombie.
The zombie in popular fiction can be
defined as a character ‘who has lost the ability of free
will, resorting to primitive cognitive function’ (Zombiehub.com, 2007) and
although usually a reanimated corpse, this does not have to be so; Cronin’s
hybridisation of the zombie and the vampire negates the need to have the virals
as reanimated. Instead, he keeps the
instinctive and non-conscious qualities of the traditional zombie, whilst allowing
some principal qualities of the vampire to be incorporated into this new
creature, such as the need for fresh blood and an aversion to sunlight. In The
Passage the virals are primarily hunters; they roam the landscape, usually
in packs of at least three searching for fresh blood. They are mutated humans, but many of their
human characteristics are eroded by the virus that created them; this means
that although they are physically recognisable to the humans that they knew,
their ability to recognise individual humans is (usually) destroyed by the loss
of both memory and soul that is part of the infection.
There is
evidence within the text to support the theory that each of the Twelve are in
control of their own segment of the viral population. The virals, whilst having similar attributes
to zombies in the way they behave mentally, have the reactions of the
traditional vampire and are also prone to the same weaknesses. This is highlighted when the ‘outcasts’ (the
characters from the First Colony who left the colony with Amy) are shown Todd
Browning’s Dracula adaptation, as
detailed earlier, and Peter thinks to himself that the film ‘almost seemed to
be a kind of instruction manual.’ (Cronin, 2010, p658) Here, the recognition of Dracula as being of
the same genus as the virals is foregrounding the relationship between the two
breeds of vampire, whilst still allowing the reader to appreciate the
differences between them and illustrating ‘the loss of human identity’ (Botting,
2010ed, p157) that Fred Botting argues is included in the ‘strangely mutated
life forms’ (Botting, 2010ed, p156) of gothic science fiction; that is, the
virals are clearly lacking in the human-like characteristics that Dracula
embodies, despite their genealogical similarities.
Virals, the
hybridisation of vampire and zombie are, it can be argued, the super soldier
that the US army was attempting to create at the beginning of the novel,
individuals able to function as a mindless machine and follow orders issued
from higher up the chain of command and ironically, the US do succeed in
creating a soldier that can win wars. These
soldiers, however, whilst technically a success for the US, cannot be
controlled by the US army; they are the army of the Twelve. The reader is informed, through the thoughts
of Babcock, that ‘They [the Many] were his to command,’ (Cronin, 2010, p568) and
that he is connected to them, able to ‘stretch out his mind’ (Cronin, 2010,
p569) and issue orders that will be carried out. Here, as mentioned earlier, the virals mirror
radicalized extremists, those who will carry out an order from their superiors,
regardless of what that order is. However,
as well as making a link with extremists, Cronin also explicitly connects the
virals with the US army; they are the result of the US experiments to create a
perfect soldier and they follow the orders of their superiors without question,
just as the body of the army is trained to do.
It can be deduced that Cronin is drawing parallels between the behaviour
of two seemingly opposing cultures and that the US attitude towards other
cultures is similar to those regarded as being extreme and a threat to US
freedoms, although their status as a dominant world power means that their
mistakes can have huge ramifications on the rest of the world as already
detailed through their primary involvement in the global economic crisis of
2008.
Zero and the Twelve
Nina Auerbach observes
in Our Vampires, Ourselves, that that
‘Vampires go where power is…with the birth of film, they migrated to America in
time for the American Century.’ (Auerbach, 1995, p6) The setting of The Passage as being in America, both pre and post apocalypse
intimates the contemporary importance of America as a world power, but more
than this, it also highlights the danger of this country having such as
position, both in contemporary society and the context of the novel. It is the might of the American army that can
create beings which could win wars, but, it is also this same world power that
brings about the downfall of its own, if not global, civilization through its
creation of the mutated virus and its subsequent escape into society. The virals, once loose in the world, have a distinct
power structure, with ‘The Zero’ (one of the people from the original Bolivian
expedition at the beginning of the novel) as the leader and the Twelve (those
death row convicts used in the experimentation process) his direct disciples and
this power base is important within the context of the setting and the events
of the novel. Whilst the narrative is not
overtly religious, the use of the number twelve signals a fundamental
significance within the text that can be connected with religion; Jesus Christ
had twelve apostles, there were twelve principal Gods of the Pantheon in
Ancient Greek myth, in Shi’a Islamic religion there are twelve legitimate successors
to the Prophet Muhammad and the Norse God Odin had twelve sons, all powerful
mythological and religious traditions which deal with deities from a variety of
cultures. There can be little doubt that
Cronin is suggesting a link between Zero and the Twelve and religion, both historical
and contemporary, reflecting on how parts of the global population view
religion in the post 9/11 world ‘that glorious and terrible day’ (Cronin, 2010,
p84) which changed the world. Within contemporary
society, it is clear that religious tolerance has diminished with UK newspaper
The Times reporting in 2007 that ‘the War on Terror has radicalised Muslims
around the world to unprecedented levels of anti-American feeling’ (Gledhill,
2007) and similarly there are alleged instances of religious intolerance within
the US, (Sherman, 2010) even though the US instigated ‘War on Terror’ resulting
from the 9/11 atrocities do not, officially, have a religious focus. Richards, one of the novel’s characters
involved in Project Noah encapsulates a level of feeling displayed in certain
parts of contemporary society as
‘the war – the real war, the one that had been going
on for a thousand years and would go on for a thousand more – the war between
Us and Them, between the Haves and the Have-Nots, between my gods and your
gods.’ (Cronin, 2010, p84)
Once created, Zero
and the Twelve are representative of a variety of religions, as demonstrated
above, and in the novel this is a malevolent presence; these man made deities
and their followers in the form of the virals are responsible for the death and
destruction of much of society. Equally,
as already discussed, the virals are a mindless army who obey the orders of
their ‘superiors,’ regardless of the personal cost.
If the Twelve
are the representations of religious deities, then fundamentally, the vampires
and virals form a Theocracy, with the vampires functioning as the ruling body;
this is something highlighted in Chapter 51of The Passage, when Babcock, one of the Twelve is remembering setting
up The Haven (the first population base ruled by the Twelve), relating that he
‘will let [people] live in this way and no other…and those that did not…they
were made to die so the others could see and know and refuse no longer.’
(Cronin, 2010, p570) Whilst Zero, the
archetype vampire in this narrative is, at the beginning of the novel, not an
evil character, each of the Twelve are convicts from death row and this is
important in the consideration of their status as deities and rulers. Apart from Carter, who has been wrongly
convicted of his crime, all of the others are guilty of heinous wrongdoings,
from child molestation to matricide and this is something that is carried
through into their incarnation as Gods. When
given an omniscient presence in Babcock’s mind, the reader learns that he was
abused by his mother until he killed her, and more than this, it made him happy
to commit matricide. Unlike the virals,
whose memories and experiences are lost after they are infected, the Twelve are
in possession of their pre-infection minds and it is this along with ‘skin [turned]
into a pale kind of protein-based exoskeleton so hard it made Kevlar look like
pancake batter,’ (Cronin, 2010, p87) telepathic ability and the capacity for
flight that is the basis of the new religious order after the apocalypse; not
benevolent Gods who allow freedom and happiness, but demons, complete with
scales and wings.
The name of the
project which created the vampires, ‘Project Noah’ although ostensibly
referring to the longevity of the soldiers the US are aiming to create, (Cronin,
2010, p44) is also heavily resonant with religious connotations and the use of
the name Noah is a recognised literary device, with Mirriam-Websters Encyclopaedia of Literature (Mirriam-Webster Inc,
1995, p813) reporting that it has a twofold meaning; it has been used in the
same way as the Rainbow, to mark the Covenant with God that ensures humanities
protection against natural disasters and also as a ‘symbol of obedience, as a
new Adam, as a type of Christ, as a worldly scientist.’ The irony in using this name for the project
is evident; the created vampires, whilst being the basis of a new race are in
no way obedient to their creator. Noah,
the saviour of the Human Race in The Bible, is in this context the cause of its
downfall. However, the presence of Amy
within the text as the culmination of the genetic experimentation makes the
name of Project Noah more than just ironic, it is heavily prophetic; Amy is the
one person who, seemingly, has the capacity to save the world from the ‘flood’
which has wiped out much of civilization and can be described as the successful
culmination of Project Noah.
Amy Harper Bellafonte
If Zero and the Twelve
are a malevolent religious presence in the post-apocalyptic world of The Passage, then Amy is surely to be
considered as a messianic manifestation within the text as she is the character
who has the capability to override the power of the Twelve and become the
saviour of the human race. In the
opening sequence of the novel Amy is the focus of the narrative and the reader
is given a biography of her early life and details the events leading up to her
inclusion in Project Noah and after her infection and seeming recovery from the
virus. The opening words of the novel
describe Amy in heavily biblical terms as ‘the One Who Walked In, the First and
Last and Only, who lived a thousand years’ and foregrounds her importance in
the text, despite her absence from the middle portion of it.
Amy’s link with
religion is signalled early in the text, through her relationship with Lacey, a
prescient nun who tries to prevent Amy being taken and used in Project Noah
after her mother abandons her. Both Lacey
and Amy are signalled as potentially Gothic characters at this early point of
the novel; whilst at the zoo with Lacey, Amy intimates an ability to communicate
with the animals and they are certainly drawn to her, to the extent that they try
to break from their cages to get to where she is, making such a noise that it
causes a panic and the zoo has to close.
It is at this point that Lacey’s prescience is made explicit; she has a
vision of
The rolling armies and the flames of battle; the
graves and the pits and dying cries of a hundred million souls; the spreading
darkness, like a black wing stretching over the earth; the last bitter hours of
cruelty and sorrow, and terrible, final flights; death’s grand dominion over
all, and, at the last, the empty cities, becalmed by a silence of a hundred
years. (Cronin, 2010, p105)
As with the opening of the novel, the wording used
is reminiscent of religious language; this is a prophecy that would not be out
of place in the Book of Revelations and Lacey, a woman who already knows the
power of God, is the prophetess. It is
Lacey’s understanding that, from childhood, God has spoken to her and it is He
that has told her of the terrible fate that awaited the world. It is here that
a bond between Lacey and Amy is first indicated; part of Laceys vision is ‘her
Amy…time-stilled and nameless, wandering the forgotten, lightless world
forever, alone and voiceless’ (Cronin, 2010, p105) and as a result of this
revelation, Lacey becomes one of Amy’s first companions. Lacey follows Amy to ‘the Chalet’ which
disguises the laboratories used to experiment on the Twelve and aids in her
rescue after she is infected; then Lacey waits in isolation for Amy’s
re-emergence in the second part of the novel for nearly a Century.
In the second part of the novel, the
results of Amy’s infection become evident and there are a number of ways that it
is clear that Amy is the successful result of Project Noah. Firstly, her lifespan is extended, just as
the military planned; there is nearly a Century between Armageddon and the
narrative that begins in part five, but Amy appears to have only aged eight
years. Secondly, she is able to control
the virals, preventing them from killing Peter Jaxon and thirdly, after the
death of Babcock, she is the one who helps the virals to remember themselves
and die peacefully. Again, the religious
connotations are recognizable within the text; upon being reunited with Amy,
Lacey tells Peter the story of Noah, she explains to him that he, Peter, is
Noah and that ‘Amy is the ship.’ (Cronin, 2010, p711) Here, the meaning of the title of the book
becomes clear; steeped in the religious imagery of the transition between life
and death, The Passage is Amy herself, the Ark, ‘the ship…she carried their
souls inside her…all along, waiting for this day…when they would make their
passage.’ (Cronin, 2010, p721)
It is at this end point of the novel
that the correlations between Amy and Zero become apparent; they are both ‘the
other, the one above and behind, the Zero.’ (Cronin, 2010, p720) Both of these characters are potential
deities, although this is something Amy rejects; after the discovery of the
virus in its injectable form, Amy will not allow Peter to use the vials to inject
himself, she destroys the vials saying to him ‘it would have made you like me.
And I couldn’t let that happen.’ Unlike
Zero, Babcock and the rest of the Twelve, Amy does not want there to be more
like her, understanding the loneliness and isolation that both she and Lacey,
(who was also injected with the virus) have endured through their long lives.
If the Twelve are a manifestation of
the demon within the novel, complete with scales, wings and eyes ‘the orange of
highway cones’ (Cronin, 2010, p69) then Amy is undoubtedly the opposite. She does not have any of the physical
characteristics of Zero or the Twelve; despite being nearly a Century old, she
looks like a child, a recognised representation of innocence and purity, clearly
contrasting the demonic appearance of Zero and the Twelve. According to Mark Edmundson in Nightmare on
Main Street, angels work by ‘redeeming us from Gothic terrors’ (Edmundson,
1997, p81) and this is certainly one of the functions of Amy within the
text. Whilst not explicitly referred to
as an angel, she clearly redeems the virals from the hell that they are living
on earth by giving them back their human memories and helping their transition
to death and in turn allowing the reader the redemption of knowing that despite
the man-made manifestations of evil which exist in the world, there is someone
who can save humans from, what is essentially, Hell.
Conclusion
Whilst the presence of Gothic can be
traced through the narrative from the beginning, with Amy able to communicate
with animals prior to her infection, the prescience of Lacey and of course the
vampires and virals, it is the relationship between good and evil which
resonates with Gothicity throughout the text.
The novel has a clearly religious basis, exploring the role religion
plays in a society that is obsessed with power and domination over everything,
including nature and Cronin uses the fears of contemporary society, in the form
of both government and religion, creating a post-apocalyptic civilization which
has lost the ability to be redeemed through the establishment of Zero and the
Twelve as a society wide theocracy. Edmundson
says that in contemporary society
Few[…]
seem to believe in God’s presence. That is, […] some powerful force for good
shaping the day-to-day life in accord with a perceptibly benevolent master
plan. (Edmundson, 1997, p67)
and if
this is so, then Cronin’s representation of Amy, an angelic child who is able
to fulfil the role of redeemer in what is ostensibly a narrative dealing with
the end of the world as we know it, is filling the gap that has been left by
the ‘withdrawl of God from the day-to-day world’ (Edmundson, 1997, p68) Through the creation of Zero and the Twelve,
Cronin shows a view of religion and governance as being oppressive and
dictatorial, its adherents being controlled by a ruling body and dissention
punishable by death. He then provides
and antithesis to this malevolent theocracy, in the form of Amy, showing her as
a redeemer, an angelic Christ-like figure who is able to save the souls of the
damned humans who have become demonic figures on earth. The presence of Amy, therefore is central to
the religious theme of the novel, showing both the reader and the characters a
benevolent presence within the narrative and establishing the existence of hope
in a world of despair and death; hope for a better life, hope for a future that
involves more than just fear of religion and most of all, hope of redemption.
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