The award-winning book, Station Eleven, by St. John Mandel is an inspiring and captivating story of a pre and post-apocalyptic world. The story jumps back and forth between the pre-pandemic world, and after the global collapse, Year Twenty. As the book progresses, connections are made between the two time periods. In addition, Mandel is able to create an unusual plot that integrates pandemics with the arts, but incorporate elements that are more familiar such as the extensive use of the internet, cell phone communication, and transportation.
The man that ties this pandemic with the arts is a famous actor named Arthur Leander. One night in a theater in Toronto, Arthur dies on stage in the middle of a performance of King Lear. A man named Jeevan, who is training to become a paramedic, attempts to save Arthur, but it is too late. He comforts a young child actress from King Lear named Kirsten. Arthur’s death was the beginning of the Georgia Flu pandemic, also known as the collapse.
Fifteen years after the collapse of civilization, Kirsten becomes part of a Traveling Symphony. The Symphony globe trots from town to town, performing Shakespeare’s plays and classical music, but danger lies ahead of them. Two members of the Symphony, Charles and Jeremy, along with their baby, go missing. The Symphony goes in search for their friends, which lead them to the Museum of Civilization, an airport settlement that is supposedly the birthplace of the evil prophet. As the group progresses toward the airport, we learn more about Arthur, Kirsten, and other characters through flashbacks of before the collapse of civilization. A character that is introduced then is Miranda, Arthur’s first wife. Two copies of the Dr. Eleven comics Miranda created made it through the pandemic. One of which was given to Kirsten by Arthur, and the other to Arthur’s son, who we find out later is the prophet during Kirsten and her friend’s dangerous encounter with him.
People in this current world are constantly facing epidemics, and not only is the person that is infected in physical pain, but them, along with their family and friends are inflicted with emotional pain as well. Mandel’s book is very much distinct to most apocalyptic novels not only in terms of its plot, but also the emotions readers feel. Most apocalyptic novels include grimness, horror, or anxiety. However, by choosing not to describe the hunger, thirst, and exhaustion that typically occurs during a flu pandemic, Mandel eliminates those negative feelings.
When Mandel describes the absence of the modern world’s day-to-day necessities, she is very direct, and displays no sense of emotion. “No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points of origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and then looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines” (Mandel 178). Most people would assume that in this new world, survival is the most important; however, this book clearly expresses how “survival is insufficient” (Star Trek Voyager). Eating, drinking, and staying alive is not enough to live on a daily basis. It is through the pleasures in life such as arts, music, and theater that enable us to truly live. Even today, people play music and perform plays in refugee camps, war zones, and all other types of scenarios, and that is what reminds us of humanity and civilization. Jeevan is one of the few characters in the book that lives in both the pre and post apocalyptic world. In the pre-pandemic world, he works to leave behind his unfulfilling job as a paparazzi, but after the collapse, he finds it a chance to do valuable work–becoming a paramedic. “Jeevan found himself thinking about how human the city is, how human everything is. We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all” (Mandel 178). This shows that art and culture provides the basis for humanity both in developed and undeveloped societies, and is a source of happiness even in disease ravaged communities.
Although Station Eleven lacks detail on the human misery that typically occurs during a pandemic flu, it provides a unique perspective to an apocalyptic world. In fact, it may even be comforting and optimistic to some as it implies that a major collapse will cripple the world, but not ruin it, and art will save us.
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