94 pages • 3 hours read
Emily St. John MandelStation Eleven
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Dr. Eleven
Several of the characters, events, and situations depicted in Dr. Eleven take on symbolic significance by mirroring what is occurring in the world after the collapse. Dr. Eleven and the other inhabitants of Station Eleven have left the world they know behind, just as those who survive the collapse find the world they live in utterly changed. Station Eleven, representing the survivors’ new world, is damaged, resulting in a perpetual state of twilight as well as raised oceans. A few years after the escape, people on Station Eleven disagree on a fundamental point: Dr. Eleven and those that dwell on land do not wish to risk a return to earth, while those who live in the Undersea want to go back. Similarly, some of those who survive the collapse disagree about whether it is possible or even desirable to return to a world like the one that preceded the collapse.
This leads to the creation of disparate groups in the world after the collapse, such as the Traveling Symphony and those who follow the prophet. Dr. Eleven also serves to highlight how the prophet and Kirsten are foils to each other. The prophet’s final line, “But it’s too late for that” (302), offered in response to Kirsten’s quotation of a line about going back home, reveals his identification with Dr. Eleven, who insists that going back would be ill advised. Kirsten, on the other hand, identifies more with the Undersea who, like the Traveling Symphony, live in a state of limbo as wandering nomads. Mandel uses the Dr. Eleven series as a way to reveal the underlying attitudes of Kirsten, the prophet, and other characters within the novel.
Ships
Several types of vehicles or ships take on poetic significance throughout the novel. Kirsten and August discover a model Starship Enterprise that foreshadows the Symphony’s later decision to explore new lands outside of their usual territory, much as the Enterprise ventured into unexplored space. Station Eleven itself can be considered a ship of sorts and represents an imagined pinnacle of human technological achievement. Airplanes, though less striking, are presented as actual signs of human ingenuity, and Clark is struck by the beauty of flight, even as the prophet adopts an airplane symbol from the airport as a sign or marker. In her final moments on the beach, Miranda takes comfort in the thought that a fleet of ships that she can see from the beach in Malaysia is isolated from the virus. Later, at end of the novel, Clark is invigorated by the thought of “ships moving over the water, toward another world just out of sight” (333). Taken together, these ships represent humanity’s achievement, potential, and forward momentum.
The Paperweight
The night of Arthur and Miranda’s third-anniversary dinner party, Clark brings a gift of a paperweight. It ends up in Arthur’s study, but Miranda takes it that night and keeps it until just weeks before the collapse, when she returns it to Arthur. Arthur, for whom the paperweight carries no significance, gives it to Tanya, who gives it to Kirsten. Kirsten keeps it and carries it with her in the years to come, explaining to Diallo that she does so simply because it is beautiful. The paperweight demonstrates the beauty to be found in everyday objects, independent of any sentimental associations: Miranda takes it because she likes it, as does Kirsten, who remains oblivious to the fact that it once belonged to Miranda and Arthur. This desire to cling onto such ordinary objects also ties to the loss, memory, and nostalgia theme. In the wake of the collapse when everything in the world has been destroyed and the future remains uncertain, holding onto past relics becomes a symbol for holding onto memories of the past.
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By Emily St. John Mandel
