Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax Character Analysis in The Hot Zone

A brave, dedicated soldier and scientist (trained as a veterinarian), and a woman in a male-dominated field, Nancy Jaax provides The Hot Zone with a compelling and relatable protagonist. A loving wife to Jerry, a dedicated mother, and a devoted daughter, Nancy has a streak of courage, stubbornness, and patriotism that drives her to risk her life over and over for the sake of the general public. During the Reston Ebola scare, she plays a pivotal role in the decision to isolate and decontaminate the Reston Primate Quarantine Unit, eventually dissecting Ebola-infected monkeys despite the great personal risk this entails.

Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax Quotes in The Hot Zone

The The Hot Zone quotes below are all either spoken by Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax or refer to Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Be exquisitely careful. Know where your hands and body are at all times. If you get blood on your suit, stop what you are doing and clean it off right away. Don’t let blood stay on your gloves. Rinse them off right away. With bloody gloves, you can’t see a hole in the glove.

Related Characters: Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax (speaker)

Related Symbols: Spacesuits and Gloves, Blood and Bleeding

Page Number and Citation: 224

Explanation and Analysis:

Some of the monkeys that were dying in Room H had become essentially a heap of mush and bones in a skin bag, mixed with huge amounts of amplified virus.

Related Characters: Richard Preston (speaker), Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax

Related Symbols: Blood and Bleeding

Page Number and Citation: 229

Explanation and Analysis:

Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax Character Timeline in The Hot Zone

The timeline below shows where the character Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax appears in The Hot Zone. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Innovation and Curiosity vs. Hubris Theme Icon

...incurable infectious diseases, called “hot agents” or “hot viruses.” The employee in this case is Nancy Jaax, one of the narrative’s protagonists. (full context)

...idyllic American town near the Appalachians, and home to a Victorian house owned by Major Nancy Jaax, a US Army veterinarian, and her husband. Nancy is a short but strong woman,... (full context)

Some officers at Fort Detrick take issue with Nancy’s hands, calling them abrupt and clumsy. As a result of their criticism, as well as... (full context)

On this particular night, Nancy decides to open a can of green beans for her children. Unable to find a... (full context)

The next day Nancy wakes at 4 AM and dresses in her Army uniform. She considers that she may... (full context)

Nancy walks into the building and heads for the Level 4 biocontainment area, where she intends... (full context)

When Nancy first asked to be transferred to pathology within USAMRIID, the colonel in charge told her... (full context)

Nancy Jaax, meanwhile, has volunteered to work on Gene Johnson’s Ebola experiment in order to prove... (full context)

After a morning of paperwork, Nancy stops by Tony Johnson’s office and the two decide to enter the Ebola suite. Alone... (full context)

As Tony Johnson enters, Nancy puts on her Chemturion biological spacesuit, taking special care with its heavy rubber gloves, the... (full context)

Nancy Jaax is now standing with Tony Johnson in the mazelike, oppressive hot zone, which is... (full context)

Nancy Jaax and Tony Johnson reach the cages of the monkeys who have died during the... (full context)

Nancy inspects the monkey, noting nervously that it still has its sharp canine fangs (which are... (full context)

Tony Johnson and Nancy lay out the monkey on an autopsy table. They pull on yet another pair of... (full context)

Nancy thinks about how much she hates blood, because of the dangerous viruses it can contain.... (full context)

Nancy allows herself to be decontaminated for seven minutes in the air lock, and considers what... (full context)

When the decon shower is finished, Nancy takes off the spacesuit, and realizes with horror that the glove has indeed leaked, meaning... (full context)

Later that night, Nancy calls Jerry in Texas to tell him about her close shave. He is appalled, and... (full context)

...spread through the air, as this strain of Ebola appears to have done. Years later, Nancy tells the story to Preston, explaining that somehow, Ebola managed to make itself airborne. (full context)

The Army sends Nancy and Jerry Jaax to the Institute for Chemical Defense near Aberdeen, MD. Nancy studies the... (full context)

From November 20th to 25th, Nancy and Jerry Jaax have “the worst Thanksgiving of their lives.” They arrive in Wichita to... (full context)

...Command to set up a meeting. The men decide that they should also bring in Nancy Jaax. The group enters the office where the general, another virus hunter, meets them. Russell... (full context)

...or euthanizing all the monkeys, burning their corpses, and dousing the building in sterilizing chemicals. Nancy Jaax asserts that it may be more humane to euthanize the monkeys rather than let... (full context)

...can discuss their approach tomorrow over the phone. After the conversation, C. J. Peters tells Nancy Jaax that he wants her on the pone call as well. (full context)

Nancy walks to Jerry’s office and finds him brooding about his brother. She tells him that... (full context)

...the two get home, Jaime is at gymnastics practice while Jaison is doing his homework. Nancy drives out to pick up her daughter, who falls asleep in the car on the... (full context)

Later in the morning, C. J. Peters, Nancy Jaax, and Gene Johnson head out to Virginia, where they meet Dan Dalgard at the... (full context)

Nancy Jaax, Gene Johnson, and C. J. Peters drive to the gas station and wait. As... (full context)

...Volt driving. He shows the Army team seven double bags filled with monkey corpses. Peters, Nancy, and Gene are horrified by the possibility of contamination, and Nancy refuses to put the... (full context)

...Institute with the monkey corpses mid-afternoon, and moves the specimens up to the Ebola suite. Nancy Jaax finds a member of her staffed named Lieutenant Colonel Ron Trotter and tells him... (full context)

...currently dormant, it could come alive once again if it touched living cells (such as Nancy’s cells). (full context)

Nancy cuts into the monkey’s abdomen. Although the spleen is hard and enlarged, the monkey has... (full context)

As Nancy dissects the monkeys, C. J. Peters runs a huge meeting in the conference room of... (full context)

While Dan Dalgard types, he gets a call from Nancy Jaax, who believes that the monkeys have simian hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, or both—her results are... (full context)

Later that morning, Nancy Jaax and C. J. Peters head to the corporate offices of Hazleton, Washington to speak... (full context)

Dan Dalgard invites Peters and Nancy to come with him to the monkey house to look at the animals. He does... (full context)

Later that evening Jerry drives home, while Nancy returns to her lab to continue working on the monkey samples. While Jerry is home,... (full context)

Meanwhile Nancy wakes her children at 7:30 AM and reminds them that she and Jerry will be... (full context)

Nancy gets into a scrub suit, puts on her spacesuit, gathers boxes of syringes, and goes... (full context)

After Nancy has left, Jerry counts sixty-five more monkeys in the room. He uses a special device... (full context)

At USAMRIID, Nancy Jaax and Ron Trotter stay up till 1 AM dissecting monkeys. This time, the monkeys... (full context)

With Nancy still asleep, Jerry Jaax leaves home at 4 AM and meets Gene Johnson, and together... (full context)

Jerry returns home to Nancy, and the two talk while Jaime sleeps between them. Jerry tells Nancy that the mission... (full context)

On December 7th Nancy wakes up at 4 AM to a phone call from her brother: their father’s heart... (full context)

...monkey corpses have been coming in from Reston. Most of them are being incinerated, but Nancy has also been dissecting a large number of them in order to understand how exactly... (full context)

Preston goes to visit Nancy Jaax. She offers to show him Ebola, and he looks at slides of a monkey’s... (full context)

Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax Character Analysis

Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax Quotes in The Hot Zone

Part 3, Chapter 1 Quotes

Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Jaax Character Timeline in The Hot Zone