...Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven highlights the importance of art in a world that needs more than survival through connections of modern society and a fictional post-apocalyptic society. In addition, Mandel uses the post-apocalyptic genre convention of sadness to discuss how the characters in the novel utilize art to deal with hardships. With the publication of this novel being significantly recent, Mandel tries to appeal to an audience living in a time that is dominated by modern technology, and urges her readers to put great value in things that can be preserved in a post-apocalyptic environment like art. Mandel follows the post-apocalyptic genre’s guideline well to convey her message while creating a strong appeal to her younger audience. Mandel’s...
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...Station Eleven, a science-fiction novel that is written by Emily St. John Mandel, is a unique piece of work in the grand literature field. While other post-apocalypse novels are still writing about dangerous environment and struggle of survival, Mandel takes her aim at portraying a Symphony of joyful artists who travel from towns to towns in a ruined world. For each stop, the Symphony would build up a stage and entertain the local publics with classical concerts and Shakespeare’s theatrical plays. Indeed, the content of Station Eleven has successfully drawn readers’ attention, and Mandel is adept at giving her characters’ emotional features to make them particular. However, she applies the genre of post-apocalypse in a defective way. What Mandel...
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...The Necessity of Art in Station Eleven Ever since I can remember I have loved theatre. It’s been a constant presence, and an important touchstone, in my life. However, for as long as I’ve loved theatre, I have also been ridiculed for my enjoyment of it. As a child, my interest was tolerated as something precious, something I was bound to grow out of. My parents and teachers would sit in the audience, clapping and cheering me on, all the while thinking to themselves “I bet she’ll make a great lawyer one day.” They thought, like most of society, theatre was an unnecessary luxury; a pastime for the rich and powerful, for those who didn’t have to worry about putting food on the table, or clothes on their children’s backs. Certainly not something that one makes a career out of. It was inevitable that I would eventually wake up and announce my decision to study psychology or journalism. Now, I am only weeks away from legal adulthood, and that day still hasn’t come. As I apply for university theatre programs, I find it difficult to justify my choices and yet I still continue to make them because I can’t imagine being happy doing anything else. My novel, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven takes place in a world stripped bare by an influenza that wipes out 99.9% of the population. Kirsten Raymonde, the novel’s primary protagonist, is one of the few survivors. In the twenty years since the collapse, the world has become a savage, lawless place, where thievery runs rampant and murder...
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