Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven, spans across multiple timelines and provides her commentary of the modern world, ironically through it’s ‘downfall’. Station Eleven explores life post, during and after a cataclysmic pandemic, the Georgia Flu; a disease that wiped out the preponderance of mankind and for the most part, what Mandel viewed as toxic was also left behind. The novel, which highlights human-kinds ability to not only survive but rather thrive when facing chaos and anarchy revolves around the thesis of the book and motto of the travelling symphony ‘survival is insufficient’. By condemning the emphasis placed on corporate success with modern-day society, Mandel questions the reason for using work as a measure of personal fulfilment. She discredits and disparages the values of the twenty-first-century civilisation by dismissing the use of technology, a staple in the current day world.
During the pre-apocalyptic stages of Station 11, Mandel exposes the relentless pressure within modern society to use work-life success as a means of direction in life. When Arthur is reflecting on his years, he realises that he ‘spent his whole life chasing’, thus indicating that he was, as Clark condemned as a ‘high functioning sleepwalker’. Mandel also mirrors Arthur’s dissatisfaction in his life with her portrayal of Jeevan’s contempt towards his own pre-collapse career. Working as a paparazzo, Jeevan mentions that he is ‘sick to death’ of an occupation centred around materialism, gossip and spying, which seems to hurt rather than to heal, and he is only in it for the ‘money’, like many others in modern-day society. Mandel shows Jeevan’s redemption by contrasting him to his post-collapse career, where healing and helping others ‘means a great deal to him’. Jeevan heightens his job satisfaction when he is no longer in the pursuit of ‘money’, a currency with no worth in the new world. Mandel compares the contentment of the characters pre and post-collapse to prove her resentment towards the reward of monetary gain and the status that it provides.
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In Mandel’s depiction of post-collapse society, she determines that intimate human relationships are fundamentally a component of living a happy life. She discourages reliance on technology in the modern-day due to its detrimental impacts on relationships, warning that ignorance of technologies addicting and controlling power has the ability to breakdown the immersion with humanity. Before the Georgia Flu, Clark expressed his frustration toward the ‘iPhone zombies’ and a world that is constantly ‘enraptured’ by screens. The metaphoric use of the word ‘zombies’ implies that people aren’t really living at all, rather just aimlessly wandering with no purpose. This expresses Clark’s inability to relate to other humans on a personal and exclusive manner, a trait highly valued by Mandel throughout the novel. At the same time, in contrast to Clark’s hatred toward technology, he is also the one to set up the ‘Museum of Civilisation’ at Severn city airport and finds comfort in the collection of technology at the expense of prior beliefs. Clark found the inspiration to establish the museum and be the curator, a role which he takes ‘very seriously’. Ironically, it is technology in the post-collapse that actually brings people together at Severn City Airport and helps to build relationships and built on mutual experiences. In the modern world, she presents technology as an unnecessary disruption to the search for fulfilment.
Although modern civilisation hides the beauty and potential of human nature, Mandel acknowledges that the enduring and immortal power of art allows it to transcend a world of scattered values and to provide hope and inspiration to those who create and appreciate it. Though acknowledging the joy obtained from the fine art such as performances of king lear, popular for its beauty and culture it promotes, Mandel instead highlights the peace found through human input and interpretation of art. Miranda created her Dr Eleven graphic novels only because it was an escape from the hustle and bustle of being with Arthur and it ‘makes her happy’, and she does not care if others don’t see its beauty and it ‘doesn’t matter if anyone else sees them’. By endorsing Miranda’s satisfaction and fulfilment from art, rather than materialistic aesthetics, Mandel is suggesting that art is beautiful in any form as long as it serves to increase the fulfilment within oneself.
In her novel Station Eleven, Mandel depicts the beauty of human nature as overlooked in modern-day society and encourages reflection of the true values of life to discover fulfilment within oneself. By suggesting that passion is overlooked in the modern corporate world and that authentic relationships are evaded for technologies, Mandel implies that the true joys of being human are misplaced and misfocused in modern society. Mandel optimistically presents the beauties of the world as a disconnect to the twenty-first-century, suggesting that humans have the ability to spread glee without the distractions of the modern world
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