Station Eleven

I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel in 2016 for my Apocalyptic Literature class in Undergrad, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot since a friend of mine borrowed my copy to read and I finished another Emily St. John Mandel Novel (see my review of Last Night in Montreal). I found one of my essays from 2016 on Station Eleven, and I’m using that to help me remember what I thought at the time while I also flip back through my annotations and dog-eared pages to decide how I feel about it now.

A troubling performance of King Lear in which the actor suffers a heart attack on stage marks the invasion of a pandemic that transforms cities into settlements and alters civilization in a matter of weeks. In the wake of a disaster or an apocalyptic moment of cleavage, people come together and form communities based on nothing more than the necessity of a crowd for survival. Kirsten finds a community of actors and musicians traveling from settlement to settlement in an attempt to keep art and music alive. Kirsten and the Symphony’s motto of “survival is insufficient” reminds the Symphony members that their goals are noble and worthwhile.

“The problem with the Traveling Symphony was the same problem suffered by every group of people everywhere [...] this collection of petty jealousies, neuroses, undiagnosed PTSD cases, and simmering resentments lived together, traveled together, rehearsed together, performed together 365 days of the year, permanent company, permanent tour. But what made it bearable were the friendships, of course, the camaraderie and the music and the Shakespeare…”

When the Traveling Symphony reaches St. Deborah by the water, they encounter a prophet and his followers who believe they were spared from the pandemic because they are superior people who have been chosen “not only to bring the light, to spread the light, but to be the light.” A social contract in which the Prophet is replete with power and the individuals are able to explore a life beyond survival guides the community. As the Symphony packs up to leave town, a boy asks if they have permission to leave. The boy explains that the town has changed over the past few years and that, “when people leave without permission, we have funerals for them.” 

The novel jumps between past and present - before and after the flu - unraveling the deeper connections between the people of the Symphony and the prophet’s community. Station Eleven contemplates the decisions people make out of fear or necessity, how to build community from nothing, the formal and informal social contracts that govern power dynamics, and how those with natural allure choose to use their leverage. 

Thinking about it now, I mostly remember that this book made me feel a lot of feelings (in a good way) and that’s enough for me to recommend it. I will say, the idea that the end of civilization was caused by a pandemic is a little more terrifying than intriguing in 2024 than it was in 2016, but I do think it’s a useful lens through which to view covid now, if you don’t find it too traumatizing. As always, Emily St. John Mandel’s writing is striking, builds an intricate web of memories and experiences, and introduces a huge cast of characters without any of that feeling like too much in only 333 pages.

“First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.”