Finishing the novel Station Eleven by Emily Mandel, I really enjoy how the adventures of the Traveling Symphony has gone through to the ending. The whole setting of the apocalypse has set realistic situations that can happen. As the novel closed it felt kind of epic. I got to see how small moments in time link together. And how these moments add up to a life. As the novel later says, it's like "the pieces of a pattern drifting closer together”(Mendal 276). The tone throughout is consistent—nostalgic yet fully alive to the fragility and beauty of the world—and each narrative strand serves the whole
The perspective that gave me the most insight on the book is the archetypal lens. There went so many examples and motifs that are very reflective of our everyday life even though this was a post-apocalyptic story.
First death it a recurring thing, it opens that story for us and it never leaves it. We know that death is inevitable, but the novel portrays death as a thing that connects people. The story begins with the death of Arthur Leander from a heart attack, and then quickly moves to portray a world in which 99 percent of the population has died from a global flu pandemic. In this way, the novel explores death both on a personal and global scale. On a personal level, the primary characters of the novel are all connected to Arthur in some way. His on-stage death affects them all, whether because they witness it, like Kirsten and Jeevan, or because, as for Clark and Miranda, Arthur was such an important part of their lives.
The novel is able to show how different people react to Arthur’s death. Kirsten is always searching for news clippings that feature Arthur. Clark always thought about Arthur when reminded of the world before the collapse. This connection of the main characters in the novel through Arthur and his death also emphasizes the impact individual lives, and individual deaths, have on a surprisingly large network of other people. Yet Arthur’s death is immediately followed by the Georgia Flu pandemic, in which billions of people die. Through the juxtaposition of a single death with mass death, the novel is able to suggest how all of the dead are unique and important.
My favourite part of the novel is the way it portrays art as something that endures. The idea of art is so intertwined in the novel you can't run away from it. Going back to the first scene of the book which is set before the collapse and the first scene after the collapse, both feature a performance of Shakespeare’s famous play King Lear. The message is clear as day: even after the collapse of civilization and the death of billions, art remains. Art is powerful enough to survive the epidemic, in part because it isn’t reliant on technology or modernity. Which makes me really happy, because I love that art precedes us and succeeds us and will be there when we are finally gone.
Furthermore, the novel implies that art survives because it is vital and is connected to human survival. It offers people a way to understand the world and a way to connect to a world now gone. It offers a way to connect to each other and to themselves. For example, Miranda seems to explore, process, and escape her own life through her art. The novel depicts art in many different ways from acting in plays, playing music, graphic novels to even curating a museum such as the Museum of Civilization. Furthermore, Art may not be necessary to just staying alive, but the novel focuses on the idea that for humans, “survival is insufficient.” Is the human instinct to create and celebrate art that makes us human? Definitely, I agree.
The story concludes with a theme that was lacking within most of the novel, the theme of hope. Hope and purpose go against the themes of the earlier parts of the book which is Death and Existentialism, with this we see that the Symphony develop positively as we move thru the book towards its end. At last, our main protagonist Kirsten meets Clark for the first time and he shows her something that would probably change the new world. Miles down south of the airport the stars are dimmed. “In the distance, pinpricks of light arranged into a grid. There, plainly visible on the side of a hill some miles distant: a town, or a village, whose streets were lit up with electricity.” (Mandel, 311). I absolutely lost it when I read this part because I knew what it meant and I immediately thought about the motto “Because survival is insufficient”. Whoever generated the electricity in that town or village not only survived but had a goal to bring light to the world so dark and full of despair.
Work cited
Mandel, Emily St. John. Station Eleven. Harper Perennial, 2017.
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