The Passage

Project NOAH is named after the biblical Noah. The name is comical at first. As a clue, an official tells Wolgast to look up Noah: “See how long he lived” (44). Biblical Noah lived for almost a millennium. Noah represents hope, life, and the hope that God will save the righteous followers. He also symbolizes long life. Noah saved his family and all animal life by building an ark before God flooded the world. He then repopulated the planet. When Lacey tells Peter this story, he thinks he represents Noah. Amy represents the Ark. She carries humanity’s hope.

Amy’s toy travels for nearly a century to find her. Peter represents her childhood, and the “Time Before,” as well as the childlike qualities she retains at the novel’s conclusion. She is carrying the rabbit when the reader first meets her. When she meets Lacey, she asks for Peter. Peter is “velveteen plush, worn smooth in shiny patches, a little boy rabbit with beady black eyes and stiffened by wire” (57). He wears a blue jacket, like the rabbit in Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit stories. Peter also connotes the story The Velveteen Rabbit, in which a stuffed rabbit comforts a boy with scarlet fever.