“The Shattered World in Station Eleven”
Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven follows the life of a young woman named Kirsten as she reminisces about a time before the collapse of civilization. Mandel is known for having three other successful novels as well as short fiction and essays that are anthologized in many different selections such as Best American Mystery Stories. Her previous novel The Singer’s Gun won the Prix Mystere de la Critique in France in 2014. Mandel is also a staff writer for the online magazine called The Millions, which has been covering books, art, and culture since 2003.
In this novel Kirsten is a young woman who is a part of the Symphony, a group of performers and artists who entertain settlements left in this post-apocalyptic world. Together, the Symphony travels from settlement to settlement and reflects on what has happened in all of their pasts that has brought them to this situation. Arthur was previously a famous actor. Jeevan was a paparazzo and journalist for the media, yet was pursuing a career in medical technician work. Miranda abandoned her abusive boyfriend to marry her husband in Hollywood to then be cheated on by him. Clark became a very successful businessman after being a punk rock artist for quite a while. After finding a stowaway in their group things take a turn for the worse as the prophet begins to bring the group into turmoil. Mandel has produced a truly enticing piece of work with Station Eleven. She gives us the feeling of being present in this collapse of civilization and sliver of hope that is upheld. Such an unexpected and remarkable group of people carry on in the current state of their world.
In this passage, Mandel uses repetition and varied sentence length to express the lack of hope and loss of many things after the tragedy that struck the world in the novel. The constant use of “No more” (31) shows the loss of everything that was normal to life and the way things worked. However, this would all change because of the tragic epidemic that took over the world. There is also a sense of the world remaining cold and frozen especially in the phrases “they stood dormant” and “they collected snow” (31). This creates a sense of motionlessness in the world at the time with the weather as well as the state of humanity. Mandel illustrates the amount of anguish and dejection that is in currently in this story and the lives of the characters. The long descriptive sentences about the cold and depressing months really gives the reader a sense of “No more” (31) as Mandel would put it. Mandel gives the reader understanding of the situation at hand. This allows you to imagine the stillness and frozenness that is present in the world in this passage. She clearly expresses how much has been lost and the current state of the world’s civilization.
Station Eleven deservedly has its shine during the middle and end of the book. Mandel expresses the post-apocalyptic world slowly, yet exceptionally during the further parts of the novel. The book has some issues in terms of starting off in a way that is alluring, which could be problematic for an impatient reader; however, Mandel does indeed portray this world of despair with glimpses of hope very well. Other than the very start of the novel Station Eleven is overall an amazing book and Mandel does do a superb job at giving the reader a sliver of hope in the shattered world.
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