Passage (2001 Novel) - References To Pop Culture

References To Pop Culture

When they gather to watch movies one night, Vielle tells Richard, "As if talking to patients about their NDEs isn't bad enough, in her spare time Joanna researches famous people's last words." So does Willis: each chapter section and each chapter has an epigraph; they include:

• "More light!" (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's last words)
• "To die would be an awfully big adventure." (Charles Frohman, quoting J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan before he died on the sinking RMS Lusitania in 1915)
• "I must go in, the fog is rising." (Emily Dickinson's last words)
• "Hold tight!" (Karl Wallenda's last words)

Willis has the characters discuss a great many movies, some of which have indirect or obvious bearing on the novel's themes. They include Coma, Fight Club, Final Destination, Flatliners, Harold and Maude, and Peter Pan, as well as The Twilight Zone and The X-Files.

Joanna frequently talks about the Titanic movie; she, Vielle, Pat and Kit Briarley, and others share her dislike of it because of the changes to historical fact. Joanna (speaking for Willis), complains

about Lightoller and Murdoch. And Loraine Allison, she thought. She remembered ranting, "Why didn't they tell the stories of the real people who died on the Titanic, like John Jacob Astor and Lorraine Allison?... She was six years old and the only first class child to die, and her story's a lot more interesting than dopey Jack and Rose's!"