The Passage is a post-apocalyptic journey into human nature
Justin Cronin’s new book The Passage begins tediously. Each of his characters is so meticulously backstoried one begins to wonder when the character development will end and the story begin.
A not-unbelievable near-future serves as the backdrop for the introductions to each character. This future is strange and on its way to becoming somewhat Orwellian. People still drive cars and have religious freedoms but small things such as checkstops at state borders and cameras that track people show how individual freedom has become more constrained. In this future the same ambition that put humans into space is now being applied to finding the cure to everything in a project where the end justifies every means.
With such auspicious beginnings how could anything go wrong? Well it does. Suddenly the world implodes and having Big Brother watching seems like a more palatable option. This new bleak future is one where anything frightening is treated indifferently and only a few of the living remain truly human.
The survivors of this great disaster struggle to survive in a society structured around the idea that an individual’s need to live is less important than that of the community’s survival as a whole which makes sense when you consider that your community might very well be the last remnant of humanity left on Earth. In such a community one would think that everyone would be selfless and more than willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Thankfully though the author lets his characters remain all too human with the good and the bad remaining true to their natures.
Cronin now takes us across a continent in a crusade for truth and a quest by a band of survivors to save the people they love. The author seems to take perverse pleasure in illustrating that safety in numbers is nothing more than a naive illusion much to the characters’ dismay and my own sordid delight.
Even in such a fantastic future humanity will continue to share its laughter and sorrow senselessly kill and indiscriminately love one another. And unfailingly people will always hope for a happy ending.
