Yuxuan Liang

Professor Allison Dziuba

Writing 39B

5 February 2017

Art and humanity Station Eleven

   The book Station Eleven, written by Emily St. John Mandel, is a post-apocalyptic fiction story which takes place before and after the “Georgia Flu”. This story depict the tour of a travel symphony to in a post-apocalyptic world and some individuals’ fates who have this or that connection to each other and the symphony’s members before the world has collapsed. She adopts an emotionless tone and interposed way to narrate the story in order to push audiences in a more objective perspective to read and think, and the unfolding way similar to a documentary film make the post-apocalyptic story more realistic and thought-provoking. When the tone is more objective, more spaces audience will have to think on their own. On the other hand, the interposed narration way Mandel uses may confuses audiences at beginning, and hard for audiences to understand what ideas she cover under the intertwined time line. Therefore, the best way for Mandel to convey the importance of art versus the modern science and survival to her audience is using individual characters to project her general thesis, in a world when the civilizations people relying on is deprived and the survival becomes a problem.

     In this fiction, one of the main threads throughout the whole story is art. Mandel wants to convey the pursuit of art is much more important than just looking for survival. As audience will find out, arts appear everywhere in the whole story, even though it’s a collapsed world, like play, comic or even the important paper weight which has special meaning to a character and whole plot. One way Mandel shows the importance of arts is showing the meaning of arts to small characters. Kirsten, travelling through small towns as a member of the travelling symphony in a really tough situation to bring encouragement and spiritual enjoyment to those resident, becomes a symbol of human with higher pursuit when she finished her performance of a Shakespeare’s play, “Kirsten stood in the state of suspension that always came over her at the end of performances, a sense of having flown very high and landed incompletely, her soul pulling upward out of her chest” (Mandel 54). By describing Kirsten’s internal feeling, Mandel tells audiences the meaning of arts to Kirsten in a post-apocalyptic world. Comparing with the inanimate tone Mandel used when symphony is travelling, the words “flown” “completely” and “puling upward” imply the Shakespeare’s play provides her the pleasure and satisfaction as a human, but not only a creature of just fighting for survival. Therefore, Kirsten becomes an epitome of human beings who considered the “survival is insufficient” (53), and presents Mandel’s theme to audiences. Digging out the meaning of art to life is not only the common genre for post-apocalyptic literature. In the film Titanic, when the ship is almost sunk, there are four violinists who performed for those scared passengers to cheer them up. Although this scene is only a small side-show, it still shows that people always search for the meaning of art, especially in a situation when the demand of survival cannot be satisfied, and this may be the reason why Mandel need to build a post-apocalyptic world. One of the way she transmits her opinion about art and survival to her audiences is utilizing a character like Kirsten to show why art is important to her, especially in such a post-apocalyptic world.

     Mandel also use individual character as a projection of the whole plot of Station Eleven. As already mentioned, this book is not only a fiction about disaster and collapse. It focuses more on the humanity and love in a post-apocalyptic world. To suggest the thesis that art is essential for life, Mandel also utilizes Miranda to project the theme of whole story. Miranda, the author of a comic book Station Eleven in the story considers the creation of the comic as her heaven according in the book “There are thoughts of freedom and imminent escape. I could throw away almost everything, she thinks, and begin all over again. Station Eleven will be my constant” (Mandel 75). These strategy is also mentioned in the book review by Sigrid Nunez “Detailed descriptions of Miranda’s comic-book project, also interspersed throughout, reveal (perhaps a bit too pointedly, for this reader) several parallels between her science fiction stories and events in the novel itself” (Sigrid 1). By stating this, this book review tells audiences that Mandel has already implied the meaning of art by creating a specific individual character like Miranda. Actually, when talking about Miranda, author mention not only once that the comic is a haven for Miranda when her real life gets tough. Project the whole theme in small detail like this is the way that author Mandel change our attitude toward art unconsciously. It is really easy to build empathy on reader by creating a character like Miranda with a lots of common family problems or working pressures like audience may encounter in their daily lives, so they may understand easily why the art can act as a heaven to Miranda. Therefore, audience may accept Mandel’s opinion about the importance of the art in people’s lives especially in a post-apocalyptic world. In addition, Arthur’s death is another example of this rhetoric-strategy. In addition, Arthur dies on the stage when he is performing, this also indicates the following death and flu happen likes a play and the collapse has its own meaning just like every art. By condensing the huge topic to each individual characters, Mandel connects each characters to this story with huge time span and various event more tightly, and makes her theme penetrate the plot. Narrowing the general theme down into small characters also make the theme seems more reasonable to audiences when they have sympathy to those characters.

     Last but not least, Mandel mixes love and pain together in the whole book. This also can be found out in the quality of her characters. When Mandel was interviewed by Lincoln Michel, she said, “It’s not that I don’t think that humans would descend into pure violence and horror, it’s more that I think we wouldn’t stay there forever, because mayhem isn’t a particularly sustainable way of life over the long haul.” (Mandel’s interview 1). By this, she means the purpose of this book is not show the terror about the post-apocalyptic world, but to dig out the complexity of humanity in an environment without modern civilization. Therefore, in the whole fiction, readers can find out both disorder and rationality coexist. In Station Eleven, Mandel describes the scenes that August pray for the dead, “August’s gaze had fallen to the bed. She left the room first so he could say one of his prayers, although she wasn’t actually sure if prayer was the right word for it. When he murmured over the dead, he seemed to be talking only to them” (Mandel 124). Actually, this moving action of August happen when he is looting an abandoned house. Putting loot and prayer together is a kind of rhetorical strategy when these two things with strong emotional confliction are put together. It is a way Mandel uses to guide audiences to not focus on the aspect of terror but remind them to focus on the humanity. These details of humanity characterization is also the convention of a book about art and play. Once people talked about art, the first thing comes up in their minds is how art can sublimate a person’s soul. Therefore, depicting the contradiction of humanity in a post-apocalyptic fiction can also connect the art, which associates with humanity and post-apocalyptic literature, in which disorder is the main melody, together and bring the meaning of this friction.

By and large, Station Eleven could be considered as a post-apocalyptic literature. Audiences can find out lots of post-apocalyptic conventions like survival, death, dangerous, terror or disorder in this book. However, these elements only provide the context of the story, or a prerequisite for Mandel to convey her ideas or thoughts. Discussing and revealing the importance of art to humanity, especially when the modern civilization is banned, maybe the main purpose of this book, as what follows this book’s title: Mandel’s love letter to the world. Therefore, it’s really important for Mandel to connect the collapsed world in this book with art and humanity. Utilizing individual characters to represent the theme in the pre or post-apocalyptic strengthens the theme and connects them to each other and to the theme finally; mixing the contradiction about character’s beauty virtues in a disordered world push audiences to think more deeply about humanity in a ruined world, and may make them consider the importance of art to those virtues. These rhetoric strategies push the Station Eleven from a common post-apocalyptic story to a higher post-apocalyptic story discussing art, love and humanity. Just as the praise from Boston Herald, “Will change the post-apocalyptic genre. . . . This isn’t a story about survival, it’s a story about living” (praise from Boston Herald 1).

Reference

-Mandel, Station Eleven (electronic version);

-James Cameron, Titanic;

-Sigrid Nunez, Shakespeare for Survivors, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/books/review/station-eleven-by-emily-st-john-mandel.html?_r=0;

-Emily St. John Mandel, Interview with Emily St. John Mandel, 2014 National Book Award Finalist, Fiction;

-Boston Herald, praise,