1. The Theatre

Chapters 1-6

King Lear is being performed onstage in The Elgin, a Toronto theatre. King Lear, a character used to absolute power, open to flattery and holding shallow values, is played by Arthur Leander, a person whose life in many ways reflects these values. Arthur is struck with a heart condition and trainee paramedic Jeevan Chaudhary leaps to the stage mid-scene to assist. The fact that this is not the first time they have met is an indication of the connectivity of characters in the novel. It serves to remind us of humanity’s interdependence. The fact that this takes place on stage reminds us of the public nature of life and death. Jeevan steps back when a doctor arrives and comforts child actor, Kirsten. Jeevan lies to the paparazzi waiting outside about Arthur’s condition. This spares Arthur’s family, reinforcing the caring nature of Jeevan. The presence of the paparazzi at the death highlights Mandel’s criticism of this form of celebrity. The fact that Jeevan was once a fellow shutter-hound shows a turning point in his life as he embraces the new paramedic role that ‘can make a difference’.

The theatre crew discuss Arthur’s death and start to plan what to do. They all know about his private life indicating that he did not actually have a ‘private life’. Someone comments that ‘when you are dead they call your lawyer’, a comment that leaves the reader questioning what Arthur had actually accomplished. Most of those discussing Arthur’s demise will be dead within three weeks. This reinforces the imminent nature of death and highlights that everyone will die, it is only the context that differs. Tanya hands Kirsten a paperweight of ‘snow in glass’.

Jeevan leaves the theatre and wanders in the snow, real snow, as opposed to the fake snow he experienced while onstage helping Arthur. The paperweight with its fragile glass being broken and snow being released symbolises the snow of the Georgia Flu which will take the lives of most of mankind. Hua, a friend of Jeevan, warns Jeevan and he retreats to his brother’s apartment with supplies. Jeevan’s foresight saves him. This is the last time technology – the mobile phone – will help. Ultimately, in the post-collapse world it will be simple practical assistance that is needed. As the Georgia Flu takes its toll, Mandel guides the reader through what is lost. These are things that are probably taken for granted at the time. The list helps prompt readers to consider the sudden nature of loss.

Part 1 Quotes

But Arthur Leander was running out of time. He swayed, his eyes unfocused, and it was obvious to Jeevan that he wasn’t Lear anymore. Chapter 1

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. That’s a ridiculous thought, Jeevan told himself. Don’t be stupid. But now there was a prickling at the back of his neck, a sense of being watched from above. Chapter 1

In the lobby, the people gathered at the bar clinked their glasses together. ‘To Arthur,’ they said. They drank for a few more minutes and then went their separate ways in the storm. Chapter 2

Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest. He died three weeks later on the road out of the city. Chapter 2

‘Good night, Jeevan.’ Hua disconnected and Jeevan was alone in the snow. Chapter 3

That evening on the beach below her hotel, Miranda was seized by a loneliness she couldn’t explain. …. The ships were lit up to prevent collisions in the dark, and when she looked out at them she felt stranded, the blaze of light on the horizon both filled with mystery and impossibly distant, a fairy-tale kingdom. Chapter 5

2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Chapters 7-12

Much like the local workers who meet in the woods to put on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this section of Station Eleven focuses on a troupe called the Travelling Symphony on their way to perform a play in the woods. The date is 20 years after the pandemic and the troupe has performed for about 15 years. Kirsten, the child actor from the King Lear production two decades earlier, is among the cast. She holds dear to her heart the graphic novel, Dr Eleven. The illustrated text mirrors the plight of the world, a catastrophe has occurred and many escape on a space station designed to look like a planet. Some wish to return to Earth, representing those who wish to cling to the old ways, and some steer the spaceship onward, representing those who hope to build a new future. The main character, Dr Eleven, sums up his view as he states, ‘I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth’.

Travelling in cycles near Lake Michigan in the Great Lakes region, the band of performers moves with purpose amid danger. Rehearsing their lines while armed and moving demonstrates how important it is to the performers to preserve culture, even at the risk of their lives.

The travelling artists exemplify a positive aspect of humanity in that they band together to help each other. In this case, they have returned to reunite with Charlie and Jeremy, members who stayed in the town of St Deborah by the Waters to have a child. The troupe is persistent in looking for the couple, demonstrating a caring nature. In contrast to the lighter side of human nature, there is a shadow in this town. Things are not right. Morale is low among the troupe and town citizens, coincidental to the town’s given name: St Deborah, patron saint of depression and anxiety. After their performance, a self-proclaimed prophet threatens the gathering. Mandel reminds us that even after disaster human nature remains as it always was, in a struggle between good and evil.

As the Travelling Symphony leaves town, questions around the fate of its friends Charlie and Jeremy and who the Prophet is weigh heavily on the performers’ minds. Paralleling A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a child has stowed away with the troupe. In the Shakespeare play, Titania has stolen and is caring for a child. Oberon demands that she give him the boy but she refuses. This sparks trouble as will the stowaway when the performers leave town.

Part 2 Quotes

‘If you can remember your lines in questionable territory, you’ll be fine onstage.’ (Gil) Chapter 7

They’d performed more modern ….. audiences seemed to prefer Shakespeare to their other theatrical offerings. ‘People want what was best about the world,’ Dieter said. Chapter 7

August always gazed longingly at televisions. Chapter 7

I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth. (from Dr. Eleven) Chapter 8

The problem with the Traveling Symphony was the same problem suffered by every group of people everywhere since before the collapse, undoubtedly since well before the beginning of recorded history. Chapter 10

What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Chapter 11

Because survival is insufficient. (Travelling Symphony motto) Chapter 11

Being alive is a risk. (The Conductor) Chapter 12

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 …. We were saved because we are the light. We are the pure.’ Chapter 12

‘I submit,’ the prophet said, ‘that everything that has ever happened on this earth has happened for a reason.’ Chapter 12

3. I Prefer You With a Crown

Chapters 13 – 18

Set well before the Georgia Flu, this section opens with the history of Arthur and Miranda. Arthur’s mother arranges a meeting between Arthur and Miranda, after Miranda’s boyfriend has physically assaulted her in anger. The contrast between their clothing shows from where they have journeyed since leaving Delano Island. Arthur has become a ‘star’ and Miranda has followed art in the wrong direction, relying on her boyfriend’s success in selling artwork. After hitting rock bottom, Miranda has begun her own artwork for art’s sake, a graphic novel, Dr Eleven. The meeting is punctuated by its participants discussing how art plays a part in their life. The concepts of art, fame, process versus product, constants in Mandel’s novel, are discussed. The brief meeting brings the two together but it will be some time until they become intimate.

Arthur becomes ‘extremely, unpleasantly famous’. He is uncomfortable with fame and reaches out to Miranda on a shoot in Toronto after which a genuine relationship begins. Years later, Miranda and Arthur host a dinner party for their third wedding anniversary inviting Elizabeth Colton, a beautiful actress, Gary Heller, a lawyer, and Clark Thompson, Arthur’s friend. As the dinner party transpires, it becomes obvious that Arthur and Elizabeth are having an affair. Clark is disappointed in Arthur, a sign that the once struggling actor has crossed a line to a pretentious, uncaring celebrity. He comforts Miranda when she steps outside with her dog, Luli, named after the dog in Dr Eleven, and gives the gift of a paperweight. This gift changes hands throughout the novel, reiterating the interconnectedness of people before and after the Flu. Miranda walks outside in a disoriented state and is photographed by a young Jeevan. Arthur and Miranda divorce and Miranda re-joins the shipping company, Neptune Logistics, advancing in the company and regularly travelling. She remains single and constantly whispers into the mirror, ‘I repent nothing’.

The section continues with more of Arthur’s backstory revealed through a dinner with Clark. Clark is aware that Arthur is performing and is no longer capable of an honest friendship. The conversation reveals Arthur is in the middle of divorcing his third wife. A lack of success in his marriages correlates with Arthur’s success in acting as a comment on his happiness and fame. It seems that despite his fame, many of Arthur’s friends are more settled than him.

This section challenges art in many ways: the price of fame, art for art’s sake, selling art and selling out. It finishes with a visit to the post-Flu world where Kirsten is being interviewed by Francois Diallo, librarian of the New Petoskey Library and publisher of the New Petoskey News. She divides the world in two: those that want to go back to the past and those that do not want to regress.

The section title comes from Miranda’s comment to Arthur, ‘I prefer you with a crown’. This is a reference to a previous acting role of Arthur’s, before his fame, that involved a cape and a crown and which contrasts his current Blue Jays cap. When Arthur acts for the final time, he is indeed wearing a crown representing that his life journey has left him unfulfilled and he is indeed returning to his roots, roots that include calling Miranda again, vowing to see his son and being a better person.

Part 3 Quotes

Arthur’s is magnificent, smooth and expensive-looking, Miranda’s a battered peacoat that she found in a thrift store for ten dollars. Chapter 13

‘I love it.’ The revelation of privacy: she can walk down the street and absolutely no one knows who she is. It’s possible that no one who didn’t grow up in a small place can understand how beautiful this is, how the anonymity of city life feels like freedom. (Miranda) Chapter 13

‘My poor corporate baby,’ he said. ‘Lost in the machine.’ Pablo talks about metaphorical machines a lot, also the Man. He sometimes combines the two, as in ‘That’s how the Man wants us, just trapped right there in the corporate machine.’ Chapter 14

A hostile civilization from a nearby galaxy has taken control of Earth and enslaved Earth’s population, but a few hundred rebels managed to steal a space station and escape. Dr Eleven and his colleagues slipped Station Eleven through a wormhole and are hiding in the uncharted reaches of deep space. This is all a thousand years in the future. Chapter 14

All they want is to see sunlight again. Can you blame them? (Captain Lonegan from Dr Eleven) Chapter 14

There are tears in her eyes now. Miranda is a person with very few certainties, but one of them is that only the dishonourable leave when things get difficult. Chapter 14

‘What’s the point of doing all that work,’ Tesch asks, ‘if no one sees it?’
‘It’s the work itself that’s important to me.’ Miranda is aware of how pretentious this sounds, but is it still pretentious if it’s true? ‘Not whether I publish it or not.’ Chapter 15

‘I prefer you with a crown.’ (Miranda to Arthur) Chapter 15

Some towns, as I was saying, some towns are like this one, where they want to talk about what happened, about the past. Other towns, discussion of the past is discouraged. (Kirsten) Chapter 18

4. The Starship

Chapters 19- 26

As Chapter 19 opens, the Travelling Symphony is on the move from St Deborah by the Water. Its members are bickering in a friendly way perhaps to distract themselves from the idea of the Prophet and fear he might be following. A discussion ensues about the troupe’s motto ‘Survival is Insufficient’. Dieter argues it would be more profound if it had not come from Star Trek. The counterargument is that art, even in the form of a quote, is profound in its own right; whether Shakespeare or Star Trek, something valuable, artistic, still has merit. It also suggests that despite the obvious criticisms, gossip columns, paparazzi photos and graphic novels also survive, giving them merit.

During a break, the first Cello (a performer named after the instrument played) notices that a girl, Eleanor, has hidden in the troupe’s luggage and is fleeing the Prophet who has picked her as his next bride. The stowaway has put the company at risk but tells them that Charlie and Jeremy have headed toward the Severn City Airport. As she discusses the Prophet’s dream to rebuild the world, it is a clear juxtaposition to the Symphony’s dream. The Prophet has a self-serving vision for the new world with himself at the centre. The Symphony sees art and culture as the centre of a new world. Kirsten has recognized the strange connection between the Prophet and Dr Eleven because of the dog’s name but does not yet fully comprehend the significance.

The Symphony sets up camp and there is time for Kirsten to reflect. She hopes to put the recent discovery of a skeleton out of her mind. August had prayed after seeing the skeleton. Saying prayers over the dead is one of the few demonstrations of acceptable and harmless religious faith in the novel. Kirsten also thinks about the young stowaway that was born after the collapse. There is hope that those who come after a tragedy may be in some ways spared from the horror of it, that is, Alexandra, another young girl, may never have to kill. Kirsten and Dieter reflect on planes and how they have ceased to fly, a symbol of how the globalised world has passed and it is the local community that is once again the focus of society. While Mandel raises this, there is little comment to suggest whether she supports one view or the other. This passive exploration leaves the reader the opportunity to reach their own conclusions.

When Sayid and Dieter disappear, the travelling company make a plan to survive. In the same way Jeevan’s plans save him, it seems the key to survival is in anticipation. The plan is to always meet at the last destination expressed. Memory here plays an important role in survival, since it is remembering the destination and separation policy that can keep Symphony members alive when they have been separated from the group. Kirsten imagines that the Prophet has taken her friends. The idea of the Prophet’s justification is in sharp contrast to her own. Kirsten, who only justifies harming another if her own life is at risk, knows the Prophet justifies his actions by suggesting if one is the light then one’s enemies are the darkness meaning there is nothing you cannot justify; ‘there’s nothing you can’t survive, because there’s nothing that you will not do.’ Another Symphony member is then taken and Kirsten and August find themselves alone.

After an encounter with Finn, a former citizen of St Deborah by the Water, Kirsten and August come across an empty house. They ponder the scar on Finn’s face, a symbol of a lower case ‘t’ with a line across it. Later it will be divulged that the shape is in fact a plane, a plane that represents the Prophet’s time at the airport. At the house, Kirsten gathers costumes which she thinks are part of casting a spell on hard-working, hard-living communities bringing them some much deserved joy. Turning a fearful nightmare into a fun song is crucial to understanding what Shakespeare has done with A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Travelling Symphony continue this tradition. In another tip of the hat to Shakespeare, Mandel introduces letters to reveal information. In this case, they are letters from Arthur to a friend called ‘V’. These letters will be published in a book, Dear V. To end the section, we see a glimpse of Clark interviewing an employee about their manager. They wrestle with how much a person can change and differentiate between behaviour and personality or temperament. This reflects the unexpected masses immediately prior to the Flu, walking around without knowing what they are like or what will befall them.

Part 4 Quotes

‘That quote on the lead caravan would be way more profound if we hadn’t lifted it from Star Trek.’ (Dieter) Chapter 19

Because we are always looking for the former world, before all the traces of the former world are gone. (Kirsten) Chapter 20

Kirsten thought, that Alexandra would live out her life without killing anyone. She was a younger fifteen-year-old than Kirsten had ever been. Chapter 22

Hell is the absence of the people you long for. Chapter 23

‘If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there’s nothing that you cannot justify. There’s nothing you can’t survive, because there’s nothing that you will not do.’ (Prophet) Chapter 23

What the Symphony was doing, what they were always doing, was trying to cast a spell, and costuming helped; the lives they brushed up against were work-worn and difficult, people who spent all their time engaged in the tasks of survival. Chapter 24

‘Correct,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think he even realizes it. You probably encounter people like him all the time. High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially.’ (Dahlia, an employee being interviewed by Clark) Chapter 26