Emily St. John Mandel's 'Station Eleven'

What are you taking for granted? Emily St. John Mandel examines this question in her novel Station Eleven. Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic novel, which follows several characters as their lives intertwine and change due to the apocalypse–the Georgia Flu. As the rhetor, Emily St. John Mandel uses the different characters in her novel to help her analyze the complexities of modern life by comparing and contrasting it with post-apocalyptic life. Having to deal with extreme loss due to the apocalypse, the characters try to cope with their new lives by finding purpose and pursuing passions. The tremendous loss in each character’s life and their nostalgia and appreciation for the past suggests that one of the main messages that Mandel tries

In his Dissertation (for the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in English), Hyong-jun Moon, of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, writes, “imagination of the end of the world can provide us with a perspective that approaches our current situations in a radically refreshing way” (18). This shows that Mandel can use the genre to force the reader to think about life differently than the reader does now. Mandel can force the reader to think about a life without modern possessions. In the book After the End: Representations of Post-apocalypse, James Berger, senior lecturer in American Studies and English at Yale University, states, “the writer and reader must be both places at once, imagining the post-apocalyptic world and then paradoxically “remembering” the world as it was, as it is” (6). This quote shows that while writing about the post-apocalyptic world the reader and writer must both have the present in their minds. To this effect, Mandel uses the post-apocalyptic genre to exemplify how much the characters have lost in life and how much they long for the past. The book discusses nostalgia for the past when Dieter longs for the sound of an electric guitar after he says, “people want what was best about the world” (38). Life is

John Mandel also strays from the typical post-apocalyptic genre by her lack of an overly dark/ominous tone, excessive violence and death, and the focus on a heroic protagonist. In “The End of the World as We Know It”, Dale Bailey, a published author, proposes that the typical survivor [of the post-apocalyptic genre] is often of one of three categories, the rugged individualist, the bandit, or the world-weary sophisticate” (287). This quote shows how strong skilled men are usually the protagonists of the post-apocalyptic genre. However, in Station Eleven, the post-apocalyptic part of the novel focuses on Kirsten Raymonde and the Traveling Symphony as they travel around performing Shakespearean plays and orchestral music. This fact contradicts the genre because Kirsten Raymonde is a girl in her 20s, which is the polar opposite of the usual overly masculine and skilled post-apocalyptic hero. The novel is also not overly dark and dangerous; the novel mostly deals with the Traveling Symphony and the book they rarely get into life-threatening fights. The imagery of the “sea of pink flowers” rising between the buildings (127), and even though there was some sense of danger the actors could practice their lines and the musicians could argue about who used the last bit of rosin (47), and sometimes everyone discussed the importance of art by a campfire (119). This wandering from genre allows Mandel to analyze and focus on the characters of the novel and how they