Reading Station Eleven in the middle of a pandemic is, to say the least, frightening. There are many scenes involving mass panic, quarantine, and loss of life that read as all too familiar. Of course, COVID-19 is not the same in terms of severity (humanity is not nearly extinct), but the familiarity is still there.
The smaller story threads woven through the larger tale (that is, being able to follow several characters very closely) focus on the familiar and personal details. Out of the cast of POV characters, only two die by the end (and one dies at the very beginning), even though death is all around.
Station Eleven is a fascinating book to dissect as it follows a handful of characters who seemingly have very little in common. Kirsten, Jeevan, Miranda, Clark, and Arthur are vastly different from each other. A child actor, a paramedic-in-training, an artist, a job training executive, and a famous actor? Where’s the common ground? Some of them go through the entire story without even meeting each other once.
But as we know today, a pandemic has a way of bringing people together and showing what we all have in common: care for our loved ones and ourselves. The five main characters are connected by their shared suffering, but their similarities don’t end there. What they have in common, they also have in common with every other person in the world. But despite their differences, these characters are all connected not just by the worldwide pandemic, but also by relationships, as shown through objects and imagery.
A Connective Character
The first and most obvious object connecting the characters is Arthur himself. While Arthur’s death in the first chapter isn’t necessarily the inciting incident (the arrival of the Georgia Flu is), Arthur is a central figure in the story. Kirsten has already formed a connection with him through the play they both act in; Jeevan was once a paparazzi who followed Arthur around, and then, when he switches professions, he tries and fails to save Arthur’s life; Miranda was Arthur’s first wife; and Clark was Arthur’s best friend.
Some of these characters meet each other in person—Miranda and Clark have a moment together at an awkward dinner party, and Kirsten eventually meets Clark at his makeshift museum—but this isn’t the only way that characters in Station Eleven connect with each other. Though Miranda and Kirsten never met, they are linked through the knick-knack that Kirsten now carries: the captured storm. This particular object is especially interesting because it changes hands from Clark to Arthur to Miranda to Kirsten. And though the object itself never comes into physical contact with Jeevan, the storm does appear as a symbolic moment during the fake snow scene when Arthur dies onstage.
People were moving around him, but everyone seemed distant and indistinct except Arthur, and now this other man who’d joined them. It was like being in the eye of the storm, Jeevan thought, he and Walter and Arthur here together in the calm.
(St. John Mandel, 5)
Arthur being the one character who links the rest, the storm becomes metaphorical: Arthur is the storm, and the rest of the characters are caught up in it.
Connective Objects
Kirsten also connects strongly with Miranda’s graphic novel collection, Doctor Eleven. This object, a simple comic book series, also connects Kirsten to the prophet, who, unbeknownst to Kirsten, is Arthur’s son by his second wife. Even a protagonist and an antagonist share a bond that neither of them truly understands. And yet, even in the last moments of the prophet’s life and after he kills Kirsten’s closest friend, there is still a sense of union between the two of them, brought about solely by Doctor Eleven.
The comic books connect other characters as well: Miranda is the artist, Kirsten appreciates the creative work, Arthur always supports Miranda’s work but never understands it, and because Clark is a family friend, he is aware of Dr. Eleven’s existence. Again, Jeevan is the only one who has never seen the comics, but Station Eleven does appear in the opening chapter, much like the eye of the storm.
The fallen curtain lent an unexpected intimacy to the stage…He was thinking about the way the dropped curtain closed off the fourth wall and turned the stage into a room, albeit a room with cavernous space instead of a ceiling, fathoms of catwalks and lights between which a soul might slip undetected.
(St. John Mandel, 5)
While the setting itself obviously is not Station Eleven from the comics, the “cavernous space” and “fathoms of catwalks and lights” call to mind how Station Eleven is often described. The scene unfolds, revealing that Jeevan later revises his assessment of the stage and considers it to be more of a train station or airport, where people come and go. This foreshadows the airport where Clark finds himself stranded until the electricity begins to work again, over two decades after the Georgia Flu strikes.
All of these characters are in some way connected through time and distance. Three objects (one of which is even a character) are woven throughout each storyline to compare and contrast in different ways.
Emily St. John Mandel illustrates that the world is smaller than we think, and even in the worst of times, we always carry a bit of someone else. That way, we know we are never truly alone.
Rachel Sandell 