Station Eleven features explicit intertextual references to biblical apocalyptic narratives, from the Flood, in Genesis, to Revelation. This utopian narrative about the pre-apocalyptic past obscures the material labour that props up the hyper-connected globalised world and the inequalities between the global North and South that lie beneath its seemingly seamless unity. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Where the book felt stylized, more like poetry or a fable, the To believe that the series is guilty of doubtful creative choices is not to spurn art its to know what its capable of and to expect more of it. This reaction, of course, is a reflection of our own present, in which art seems to swim ceaselessly against the tide. WebFull Review | Jan 12, 2022. Station Eleven is so good, you can buy it outright on Amazon, which sells it for between $28 (DVD) (opens in new tab) and $40 (4K Blu-ray) (opens in new tab). The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament and the central text of religious apocalypticism, is ultimately not about the catastrophic end of the material world, but rather the revelation of a utopian new world, the New Jerusalem, the divine kingdom which awaits the faithful at the end of history.3 This utopian teleology is central to the Western understanding of time, indeed, [the apocalyptic] vision of history gives rise to history as a theoretical production (Keller, 1996: 89) and the traditional apocalyptic paradigm lies at the very core of secular Western modernity.4 The age of discovery and colonialism is informed by apocalyptic beliefs, as suggested by the trope of the new world (Keller, 1996). Coupland, D (2010) 2011 Player One. The scene in which a dozen women give birth was the before giving way to the future, just as all the scenes in which Miranda struggles to write Station Eleven were. Yet contemporary post-apocalyptic scenarios are predominantly dystopian. As children learn in, The critical appropriation of apocalyptic tropes to foreground their complicity with oppressive power dynamics is typical of contemporary post-apocalyptic novels. Thirdly, while in the first half of Cloud Atlas the chronological order of the narratives encourages readers to look for clues foreshadowing an ending which will integrate, and make sense of, the various strands, there are gaps in the history traced by the novel and the shifts from one era to the other remain unexplained. If nothing else, its pleasant to consider the possibility. For me, its what Ive taken to calling the series present the Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 59(2): 24357. How Station Eleven pulled off the impossible, ALeague of Their Own review feelgood baseball drama still knocks it out the park, Point Break: Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze face off in surf-crime bromance, Orange is the New Black: season four will take over your life, without parole, ThePoint Break remake: Five rules to keep it young, dumb and you know, Emily St John Mandels bestselling Station Eleven. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans. I remember watching that episode and I remember being absolutely struck by that line. Feb. 26A BIG QUESTION keeps popping up on Manchester community groups on Facebook: What happened to the 7-Eleven gas stations on South Main and Maple streets? [Children] were told about the Internet, how it was everywhere and connected everything, how it was us. London: Picador. Having established its Or more nuancedly, as Clark, a good friend of Arthurs, comments to Tyler: its not a question of having been bad or the people [who died] were just in the wrong place at the wrong time (Mandel, 2014: 260; ellipsis in original). But Station Elevens apocalypse does not bring any sense-making order. Because in the now, the before is all we have. Clark lashes out at Arthur after a bender; the music scores the end of the episode at 00:56. Just like Bertis, Tyler uses contrived rhythms and repetition in his speeches, so much so that Kirsten notes a suggestion of a trapdoor waiting under every word [of his] (Mandel, 2014: 59). But book awards and By the same token, Station Elevens prophet terrorises the population of the region, assembles a cult, and gains power thanks to a combination of charisma, violence, and cherry-picked verses from the Book of Revelation (Mandel, 2014: 280), where cherry-picked underlines the constructedness of Tylers prophecy. This pattern comprises panic, dissolution of socioeconomic structures, and despair, succeeded by a makeshift return to normality once the disease has run its course. Though their plague is much more devastating than ours (it has a 99% fatality rate), it is still quite something to see people coughing in enclosed spaces while those nearby bristle, and others wonder about masks or gather supplies so they can hunker in apartments until the virus has burned itself out. the Prophet, reconciles with his mother (Caitlin FitzGerald); graphic novelist Miranda Carroll (Danielle Deadwyler) meets her fate; Sarah (Lori Petty) shuffles off this mortal coil; and, most importantly, Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis as a adult, Matilda Lawler as a child) reunites with Jeevan (Himesh Patel), capping off one of the most finely wrought love stories in recent TV history. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. This is a sci-fi book, there should be unknowns and mystery, this book lacked in that field greatly. Station Eleven is a slow burn. ", On what survives including a comic book treasured by several characters. Hoberek, A 2015 The Post-Apocalyptic Present. Similarly to Player One, which features sections foreshadowing what happens in the next hour of the story narrated by the post-human Player One (the implication being that, when it comes to history, the apocalyptic perspective from after the end of time is manifestly impossible in human terms), sentences like The Georgia Flu would arrive in a year, Civilization wont collapse for another fourteen years, A year before the Georgia Flu, Two weeks till the apocalypse, just before the old world ended, the Georgia Flu so close now (Mandel, 2014: 40, 71, 110, 201, 217, 328) punctuate Mandels narrative. Adult Kirsten is, per the Katniss Everdeen amendment to the Geneva Convention, a skilled knife thrower and general badass, but she is also the companys go-to Hamlet, surrounded by a group of people who survived without surrendering their belief in the power of making beautiful things. She had ample experience to draw from. And the novel skips forward 20 years to a young woman who was just eight when she was on stage with that actor and is now trying to make her way in a world that's been shorn of most of what we call civilization. Station Eleven has been a best seller. It won several major awards, was an NPR Books Concierge pick, and it's just come out in paperback. Manchester: Manchester University Press. As I am Irish, and firmly believe in Thomas Cahills premise that Irish monks saved civilization by maintaining texts and libraries while Europe fell into the Dark Ages, I was all in. The following contains spoilers from the season finale of Station Eleven.. "don't have any 7-eleven stores where I live so when I seen that there 7-eleven's my one" Convenience Store in While The Roads passages signify the critique of utopian teleology through a hopeless dystopian scenario in which we find an entropic dissolution, Station Elevens ending subverts utopian teleology through speculations. These gaps keep spaces of possibility open in the novels structure, indicating Mitchells intention to debunk apocalyptic determinism and narrative foreshadowing. I very purposely set much of the action 15 and then 20 years after that flu pandemic. The chaos of historical contingency chaos which is even more evident and dreadful at times of crisis, such as that of the devastating Georgia Flu is tamed through the recourse to apocalyptic determinism, namely, to the belief that everything happens for a reason, as the prophets mother repeats throughout the novel. This dynamic is what Frank Kermode terms the sense of an ending: We project ourselves a small, humble elect perhaps past the end, so as to see the structure whole, a thing we cannot do from our spot of time in the middle ([1966] 2000: 8). ), Station Eleven celebrates the beauty of the pre-apocalyptic world and mourns its loss. Even in 2014, I was sceptical that there would be such an appetite. Are you ever surprised? 20 years later it the Traveling Symphony, a group that travels and performs for people, roams the wastelands. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.256. I focus on three elements, which reflect central features of this body of writings the critical appropriation of religious apocalyptic logic, the critique of utopian teleology, and non-linear narrative structures and parallel Mandels novel with three other key texts of the genre, Douglas Couplands Player One (2010), Cormac McCarthys The Road (2006) and David Mitchells Cloud Atlas (2004). But you know, here I am in Philadelphia this afternoon. Station Eleven manages to find something different: beauty and meaning, most of it wrapped up in the pandemic's survivors, our main characters, and the way they manage to connect to others and find some joy even in a grim time and place. Washington Post, 15 October. Yet, significantly, [T]he road seemed dangerous. Backstories are filled in notably of Miranda (Danielle Deadwyler), Arthurs lover and the author of the graphic novel (called Station Eleven, but dont let the meta-ness put you off) that has been Kirstens lifeline over her 20 years of post-apocalyptic wandering. It was about how art and culture can help people, and civilization, survive complete catastrophe. London: Routledge. Gomel, E 2010 Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination. Further threads arise from the stories of other settlements one led by Clark and the female actor (Elizabeth, played by Caitlin FitzGerald, who ended up marrying Arthur after an affair they began while he was with Miranda) and begin to be woven together. London: Continuum. Toronto: Anansi. The Flash-forward Glimpses The only descriptions of the immediate aftermath Mandel gives her readers are through Jeevan, a paramedic who tries to help Arthur when he has a stroke on stage the night the pandemic begins. The Traveling Symphony is a troupe of actors and musicians dedicated to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. You are right about how the timeframe jumps from immediate crisis to a relatively established recovery. Montral: McGill-Queens University Press. Art and literature can, the series argues, offer some safety rails, some moments of connection. I confess I came to Station Eleven reluctantly. (Only the Apple TV+ show See takes on the importance of myth and art, albeit in a more controlling, prophetic way, but that pandemic left everyone blind, which brings its own issues.). As for the issue of whether or not art has saved us, there is no way of knowing, though it certainly has functioned, at the very least, like the COVID-19 vaccinations incapable of eradicating evil but allowing more people to survive it. But I also know that if any survivor owned a snowplow, he or she would use it because snowplowing is a calling and an art form in itself. I hadnt read the book, so I had no idea what I was in for, but I certainly was not prepared for a very young Shakespearean actress trotting around snowy Chicago in her young Goneril costume as the world collapsed. The full Long Island Rail Road terminal in Grand Central Station opened Monday. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/38e15y/hi_im_emily_st_john_mandel_author_of_station/ [Last accessed 24 October 2018]. We try to make the world make sense for a minute, she explains to young Kirsten. It's that I don't think that period would last forever everywhere on earth. So I would want a globe, just to remember that there was a world out there. Open Library of Humanities, 4(2): 8, 123. Told in a relentless stream of disclosure, the story swirls around two troubled siblings, an addict named Paul and his absurdly gorgeous half sister, Vincent. Clark speaks to himself in bed next to Miles. You know, it's interesting to think about what survives. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.235. I read, If you want the girl next door, go next door: Lori Petty on Station Eleven and surviving Hollywood, Anuplifting pandemic drama? Finally, when the prophet is killed towards the end of the novel, people find in his bag A copy of the New Testament, held together with tape nearly illegible, a thicket of margin notes and exclamation points and underlining (Mandel, 2014: 303), which further confirms the profound influence of biblical apocalypses, and of Revelation in particular, on the prophets worldview. In this sense, it is interesting to note that, just like another winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, Margaret Atwood (, On the essentially temporal nature of traditional apocalyptic logic see also Kermode (, See also the prototype of the Western concept that history has an intelligible and end-determined order, whether fideistic or naturalistic, is the scheme of the course of earthly affairs from genesis to apocalypse which is underwritten by a sacred text (, Indeed, it is my contention that, in its critique of the apocalyptic understanding of history, the contemporary post-apocalyptic novel addresses aspects of Western modernity that transcend national borders, which in any case become irrelevant after the catastrophes depicted by the texts. If nothing else, its pleasant to consider the possibility everything, how it was.. Much of the pre-apocalyptic world and mourns its loss there would be such an appetite about! The novels structure, indicating Mitchells intention to debunk apocalyptic determinism and foreshadowing! 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