Station Eleven

    “These books are being written by the truckload, and some of them are even being read -- but with this level of saturation, does post-apocalyptic fiction have a future” (Heller). In “Does Post-Apocalyptic Literature Have A (Non-Dystopian) Future?” Jason Heller discusses the future of post-apocalyptic literature, and is hopeful about the future of the genre. Even though over the last few years the number of novels in the genre have skyrocketed, Emily St. John Mandel has done an excellent job of separating Station Eleven from the rabble. Like many post-apocalyptic tales, Station Eleven begins after modern civilization has fallen to an advanced disease. In this case, the culprit is called the Georgia flu. The plot begins as the reader is introduced to the main characters who are in the Travelling Symphony, a nomadic theatre troupe and orchestra. While the narrative is divided among a plethora of characters, arguably the story is most centered around one character, Arthur Leander, who was a very famous actor,  and how his life affected the lives of other characters, even after he dies. Even though the plot builds it up to be just another book in the genre, Mandel breaks several conventions that are typical to post-apocalyptic fiction.

What differentiates Station Eleven from other dystopian/utopian novels is this multi perspective narrative structure, which is one that is not found in many other stories in this genre. Most post-apocalyptic are told from a single-perspective narrative, meaning that there is one main character who the reader sees through and as the story goes along the reader will learn character traits about the character as they learn it themselves. Station Eleven’s narrative structure is multi-perspective, meaning that there isn’t necessarily one main character and instead of following one linear timeline this multi-perspective structure allows Mandel to explore not only one character’s life but the effect of one character’s life on others. For example, two such characters whose perspective is explored are those who were directly influenced by Arthur Leander. One such character is Clark Thompson, a very successful business psychologist, who is Arthur’s best friend. The second character affected by Arthur’s life is a woman named Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony who worked with Arthur when she was very young and in turn idolizes him after that. Seeing a novel unfold from multiple perspectives gives a complexity to the novel that can not exist where a single perspective is in place.

In addition to her use of multi-perspective narrative structure, Mandel breaks one other significant rule as well that I would call the chase aspect. By chase aspect, I am referring to the plot device that exists in many post-apocalyptic novels where the main characters are running from something or someone. Hyong-jun Moon, in his dissertation "The Post-Apocalyptic Turn: a Study of Contemporary Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Narrative" explores the narrative of apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction. Moon, a graduate student from the university of Wisconsin Milwaukee who achieved his PhD in English, asserts that one common feature of a popular post-apocalyptic genres is the chase aspect He would agree that this chase aspect would be a device that would take “ ...an approach that strikingly demystifies some of the governing conventions of post-apocalyptic narratives.” Pointing out that the novel World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler breaks the conventions of post-apocalyptic narratives, Moon provides several examples of when the chase aspect is used in several iconic dystopian modern novels. For example, he writes, “Set in a post-civilizational world, no character in this novel has to run away from gene-spliced animals (Oryx and Crake) or flesh-eating zombies (The Walking Dead) or cannibalistic gang members (The Road). Unlike other, more popular post-apocalyptic narratives, there is no bloodthirsty monster (The Passage), no uncanny humanoid (Never Let Me Go)... and no planet colliding with the Earth (Melancholia)”(134). While it is not his intention to, Moon provides enough examples of dystopian novels where the main characters are being chased by someone or something to generalize that the chase aspect is an important convention in this genre. So, while the chase aspect does exist in Station Eleven when the Travelling Symphony is being hunted by the prophet and his followers, it ends up being less significant in comparison to how prominent this convention is in other stories in this genre making Station Eleven unique.

    Mandel also chooses to write her story by jumping back and forth throughout time. While the use of flashbacks is prominent in the post-apocalyptic genre, Mandel’s combination of the multi-narrative perspective and going back and forth in time takes flashbacks and puts them on steroids. In other words, instead of writing from one character’s point of view in a linear timeline, she has multiple main characters whose point of view goes back and forth through time. Because of this structure, readers become more emotionally invested in the character development rather than the quest or the chase aspect that is so typical of these types of novels. One example of this non-traditional narrative sequence occurs when two characters, Kristen and August, a minor character who is a friend of Kristen’s, are separated from the Travelling Symphony. They happen upon a house that, in the 20 years since the fall of civilization, had not yet been looted. While going through the house it is revealed that Kristen is looking for a specific book, Dear V., which consists of correspondence between Arthur Leander and one of his childhood friends. Even though ransacking an abandoned house is common in all post-apocalyptic novels, what happens over the next few chapters is what separates this book from the rest. Over the next few chapters, a few letters from the book, an excerpt from when the book was published which was years before they happened upon the house, and then every chapter alternates with the narrative between an interview with Kristen and Jeevan, another minor character who appears throughout the novel, which take place in many different years after the plague, and it is through these time transitions, the reader forgets where Kristen and Jeevan are because the reader is learning so much more about each individual character that he or she loses track of the linear plot. Through these changing perspectives, the reader becomes more invested in the characters as opposed to their quest.

Another one of the most common device an author will use in this genre is the journey of the main character from point A to point B, maybe they run into a few problems which are eventually solved which in turn spurs character development. Essentially the reader follows the character along his/her journey and usually the reader will figure things out about the character’s personality as they learn about themselves. This idea is called the monomyth and stems from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with A Thousand Faces. The monomyth is defined by Campbell as “a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation-initiation-return” (qtd. In Phillips, 2). This essentially means that every story where a quest is featured follows these same basic principles: Call to adventure, Meeting with mentor, Cross the threshold, Tests and ordeals, reward, the road back and the return to the ordinary world. In Station Eleven Mandel choses to against these principles and instead creates a story where none of these principles even apply. In doing this Mandel creates a medium where the reader can get to know each character more directly rather than have the reader figure out the characters through their quest.

However in Station Eleven Mandel’s Characters already have made their journey and the reader learns about the characters through the jumps back and forth in time. What this means is that when the story is taking place 20 years after the fall of civilization, all the characters in question have already developed into the characters they are. Instead of telling the story linearly and showing the characters develop along the road, Mandel instead employs the use of flashbacks to show highlights in the characters lives when they show the most development. The motif of the paperweight continues to reappear whenever a character in question needs strength.

For example Miranda, Arthur’s first wife, takes the glass paperweight from his study on the same night that she realizes that Arthur is cheating on her. Mandel describes, “When she holds it, it’s a pleasing weight in the palm of her hand”(104). Mandel is explaining to the reader that Miranda, in that particular moment is in the midst of what could be a very chaotic time period in her life. However for some reason this paperweight is giving her the strength required to continue with her life and not let that moment define her. Later on in her life, she returns the paperweight to Arthur a few weeks before he passes away. She returns it to him because she realizes that it no longer gives her any strength. So she passes it along.

This paperweight appears earlier on in the narrative, but later in the character’s lives when it is given to Kristen when she is a young girl by her stage handler to calm her down after Arthur dies on stage, incidentally the stage handler is also having an affair with Arthur at this time. Which is how the handler came across it, it was given to her as a gift. When it is given to Kristen on the night of Arthur’s death she has this reaction to it, Mandel describes how “Kristen, teary-eyed and breathless, a few days short of her eighth birthday, gazed at the object and thought it was the most wonderful, the strangest thing anyone could ever have given her”(15).  Here Mandel makes it clear that this paperweight, even in light of witnessing her idol die right in front of her, gives her comfort. Kristen ends up keeping this paperweight for 20 more years throughout the apocalypse as a constant reminder to stay strong. The way that Mandel expertly places these excerpts about the paperweight throughout the book instead of having a whole chapter about the life of the paperweight gives the reader valuable insight into the lives and development of the characters who come into possession of it. While it is common to see motifs in this genre of book the way Mandel weaves these pieces together in a way that makes it clear that Station Eleven is an outlier.

Mandel has created a novel that breaks down the known conventions of the post apocalyptic genre. Instead of going with the standard formula of the monomyth, as so many other novels in the post-apocalyptic genre do, she takes an approach that allows the reader to become better acquainted with the characters. The approach she takes includes her decision to write the story from many perspectives instead of just the perspective of the main character and the choice to not write the story in a linear fashion but instead jump back and forth throughout time. These differences allow Station Eleven to stand out from the rest of the novels in this genre.

Works Cited

Heller, Jason. "Does Post-Apocalyptic Literature Have A (Non-Dystopian) Future?" NPR. NPR, 02 May 2015. Web. 03 Feb. 2017.

Mandel, Emily St. John. Station Eleven: A Novel. New York: Vintage , 2014. Print.

Moon, Hyong-jun, "The Post-Apocalyptic Turn: a Study of Contemporary Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Narrative" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 615.

Phillips, Steven R. “The Monomyth and Literary Criticism.” College Literature, vol. 2, no. 1, 1975, pp. 1–16. www.jstor.org/stable/25111054.