Station Eleven

“People want what was best about the world.” 

These words, spoken by Dieter, accompany the observation that the audiences find comfort in the great cultural icons of the past. In the Symphony’s case, this means that they primarily perform Shakespeare plays and Beethoven symphonies. Of course, determinations of greatness are subjective, and the risk of this nostalgic approach is that it can become stagnant if new art and interpretations fail to develop.

“But what made it bearable were the friendships, of course, the camaraderie and the music and the Shakespeare, the moments of transcendent beauty and joy when it didn’t matter who’d used the last of the rosin on their bow or who anyone had slept with.”

This statement follows a long and sometimes humorous list of grievances and tensions that exist between members of the Symphony. The implication is that, although human relationships are fraught with risk of disappointment, they can also facilitate deeply meaningful experiences. The musical and dramatic arts are suggested as a mean of sharing such experiences.

“What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.” 

These words precede a description of the Symphony’s performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a performance described in liminal shades and halftones, like a dream. The result is evocative of a fragile beauty. By this time, nearly two decades after the collapse, the initial shock and horror have somewhat faded, replaced by an elegant nostalgia for the old world coupled with hopefulness for the new.

“‘The flu,’ the prophet said, ‘the great cleansing that we suffered twenty years ago, that flu was our flood. The light we carry within us is the ark that carried Noah and his people over the face of the terrible waters, and I submit that we were saved’—his voice was rising—‘not only to bring the light, to spread the light, but to be the light. We were saved because we are the light. We are the pure.’” 

The prophet’s speech, which starts out as a celebration of the Symphony’s performance, quickly evolves into a sermon of sorts, as the prophet expounds his religious philosophy. His teachings, which are steeped in Biblical imagery, provide context to his later actions, including his willingness to use force to get what he wants. Considering his survival to be a sign of divine favor, the prophet appeals to his followers with claims of superiority.

“Station Eleven will be my constant.”

As she resolves to leave Pablo, with whom she has had an eight-year relationship, Miranda continues working on Dr. Eleven, feeling that it, more than any person, can provide stability in her life. Her words prove prophetic: When she and Arthur separate, she continues her work on Dr. Eleven. She persists in her work on the series not because of any outward pressure or acclaim but because her personal attachment to the project. Only after her death does Dr. Eleven begin to make an impact in the lives of others, including Kirsten and Tyler.

“Work is combat.” 

When Jeevan says these words to Miranda, he is explaining why he puts up with a job that brings him little satisfaction. To him, any kind of work is likely to require undesirable effort and even confrontation. Only when he shifts into a career helping others as a paramedic, instead of hounding celebrities, does Jeevan find fulfillment.

“I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.” 

This line, which Miranda first composes the night after discovering Arthur’s affair with Elizabeth, recurs several times in the text and resonates with several characters. Symbolically, the Earth becomes a damaged home in the wreckage left after the collapse, and those who remember what life was like beforehand may wish they could forget, if only to lessen their sense of loss.

“Some places, you pass through once and never return, because you can tell something’s very wrong. Everyone’s afraid, or it seems like some people have enough to eat and other people are starving, or you see pregnant eleven-year-olds and you know the place is either lawless or in the grip of something, a cult of some kind.” 

Kirsten’s words to Diallo give a sense of the disorder that has taken root in some places following the collapse. Without stable governments, people are left to fend for themselves, allowing those who are powerful to take advantage of others, leading to inequalities and abuses of power. Such power may reside in the use of brute force or, as Kirsten mentions, it may rely on belief and persuasion. The prophet employs both.

“We stand it because we were younger than you were when everything ended, Kirsten thought, but not young enough to remember nothing at all.” 

As Kirsten and August scour a school with two other Symphony members, one of them, who is older than Kirsten and August, discovers a skeleton, then wonders how Kirsten and August can stand to scavenge as much as they do. In her head, Kirsten responds with a thought that hints at the complicated relationship between memory and nostalgia. Older Symphony members, like the one who poses the question, may feel too much pain to want to visit places that bring back memories, while those too young to remember the old world may lack the personal interest to investigate such places. Kirsten and August fall into a middle ground, remembering enough to be interested, but not enough to be overcome by pain.

“When Kirsten thought of the way the world had changed in her lifetime, her thoughts always eventually circled back to Alexandra. Alexandra knew how to shoot, but the world was softening. There was a fair chance, Kirsten thought, that Alexandra would live out her life without killing anyone.” 

To Kirsten, the occasional necessity of killing is an unwelcome symptom of how dark the world has become. She also detects some signs that the world is becoming more peaceful and violence rarer. Knowing firsthand the psychological baggage that comes with killing someone, even in self-defense, Kirsten hopes that those who are young and innocent, like Alexandra, will never have to experience what she has.

“If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there’s nothing that you cannot justify.” 

Mulling over the prophet’s words after Sayid and Dieter go missing, Kirsten concludes that his vague, self-aggrandizing rhetoric could be used to justify any kind of reprehensible behavior. By assuming divine authority and othering anyone who resists his declarations, the prophet allows himself to supersede normal rules of civilized behavior dictated by common sense. The prophet’s patterns of holding people hostage to get what he wants follows logically from his beliefs.

“Here’s the thing, kids, the entire world is a place where artifacts from the old world are preserved. When was the last time you saw a new car?” 

A man that Kirsten and August meet on the road is amused to hear about the Museum of Civilization. To him, the world itself is a repository of artifacts. His characterization of the world as a museum does have some merit, as Kirsten and August’s habit of scavenging reveals. The physical objects they acquire act as reminders and proof of the world as it existed before, and at times, they evoke the same reverent response.

“If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it? Perhaps soon humanity would simply flicker out, but Kirsten found this thought more peaceful than sad.” 

Though the Georgia Flu has a catastrophic effect on human civilization, its effects are limited to people. Plant and animal life continue as before and, in some cases, certainly benefit from the decrease in human population. Within science fiction, being one of the last people on earth is a common trope, and it is often accompanied by a mission to rescue humanity from the brink of extinction. However, Kirsten does not feel any such urge.

“I’m talking about these people who’ve ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. Do you know what I mean? They’ve done what’s expected of them. They want to do something different but it’s impossible now, there’s a mortgage, kids, whatever, they’re trapped.” 

These words, spoken by one of Clark’s interviewees, describe the kind of life that Clark lives, at least up until the Georgia Flu. They spark a reassessment of himself that, among other things, helps Clark to live a life that is more authentic after the collapse than it was before. The disruptions cause by the collapse thus become a catalyst to Clark’s change, granting him a rare second chance.

“Jeevan found himself thinking about how human the city is, how human everything is. We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt.” 

From Frank’s apartment overlooking Toronto, Jeevan witnesses the collapse of civilization on a grand scale. The gradual breakdown of all major technological systems—electricity, running water, the Internet, TV, and so on—reveals to Jeevan that those very systems were always undergirded by countless human participants. His new perspective opposes longstanding views of modern industrial life as inherently depersonalized.

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

Frank reads these words to Jeevan from the philanthropist’s memoir that he is ghostwriting. They speak of an actor’s desire not simply to be noticed but also to make a memorable impression. To live in memory is to achieve a kind of immortality.

“But these thoughts broke apart in his head and were replaced by strange fragments: This is my soul and the world unwinding, this is my heart in the still winter air.” 

As Jeevan wanders south, alone, following the collapse, he begins to lose his sense of self. Personal details seem increasingly irrelevant in the new world, where anonymity is the norm. Only upon finding and joining a settlement does Jeevan regain a sense of identity, much as Kirsten does upon joining the Symphony.

“Those previous versions of herself were so distant now that remembering them was almost like remembering other people, acquaintances, young women whom she’d known a long time ago, and she felt such compassion for them.” 

Upon returning to Toronto, Miranda finds herself remembering struggles and challenges from earlier in her life. Looking back, she sees herself almost as though she were viewing another person, though it is not clear whether that separation is due to the passage of time or to a change in character, or both. What is clear is that Miranda has nothing but compassion, rather than bitterness, for her past self; she accepts what happened and lives without regret, as she reminds herself on occasion.

“For years Dr. Eleven had been the hero of the narrative, but lately he’d begun to annoy her and she’d become more interested in the Undersea. These people living out their lives in underwater fallout shelters, clinging to the hope that the world they remembered could be restored. The Undersea was limbo.” 

In the last few years of her life, Miranda grows increasingly sympathetic to those who dwell in the Undersea and less interested in Dr. Eleven, who, at one point, seemed to represent some of Miranda’s desires for closure, control, and escape. The Undersea, on the other hand, come to represent a paradoxically permanent state of impermanence, a limbo. Thus, when Miranda’s life is the most settled and stable, she resonates with the Undersea, whereas, when she is relatively vulnerable, she shows interest in Dr. Eleven’s leadership.

“You’ve seen his talent, his talent was obvious, but if you’d seen him before any of the rest of it, all the tabloids and movies and divorces, the fame, all those warping things. […] He was wonderful.”

Clark’s abrupt rejoinder to Arthur’s lawyer, who displays what Clark considers excessive interest in Arthur’s affair with Tanya, stresses Arthur’s inherently good and attractive nature. In Clark’s view, it was the external pressures and influences associated with fame that somehow changed Arthur. He does not specify what changes he observed in Arthur, but at various points, Clark is disappointed by Arthur’s infidelity to Miranda, as well as his tendency to act, obscuring his authentic self.

“Survival might be insufficient, she’d told Dieter in late-night arguments, but on the other hand, so was Shakespeare. […] The difference was that they’d seen electricity, they’d seen everything, they’d watched a civilization collapse, and Shakespeare hadn’t.” 

The Symphony’s motto, that “survival is insufficient” (119), expresses their collective desire to preserve a cultural life in a desolate world. They do so by performing great works of the past, including Shakespeare plays. Sidney feels that such a strictly canonical approach denies the possibility of new artistic advances. Though their new existence shares some similarities with Shakespeare’s, their experience living through the collapse offers other avenues to explore artistically.

“It is possible to survive this but not unaltered, and you will carry these men with you through all the nights of your life.” 

When Kirsten and August kill some of the prophet’s men, she realizes that August has never killed anyone before. This quote reflects her unspoken advice to him, based on her own experience. She characterizes taking someone’s life as a transformative act that leaves a burden on the killer. Her specification that the men they killed will remain with them during “nights” points to tendency for her to think of the people she killed when her mind is left to wander.

“He found he was a man who repented almost everything, regrets crowding in around him like moths to a light.” 

As Arthur steps into his final role as King Lear, he looks back with regret on his life, mirroring the characteristics of the aging king. To cope, he later focuses on the positive things. In the end, Arthur is neither good nor bad, but a mixture of many qualities. Although his regrets outnumber his successes, he does end on a high note, after coming to several important realizations. Unfortunately, just as they did for King Lear, these realizations come too late.