Station Eleven - February CC Book Club Selection

Parent Cafe
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<p>Our February CC Book Cub selection is 2014 National Book Award Finalist Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, the story of a traveling troupe of performers roaming a post-apocalyptic America 20 years after a flu pandemic has killed most of the world’s population. </p>

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<p>Discussion begins February 1st. Please join us!</p>

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<p>Happy to be on board for this one!</p>

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<p>Hearing and reading such good reviews of this book ! </p>

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<p>Looking forward to it, Mary13…thanks!</p>

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<p>I’m reading this now, and it is extraordinary. I haven’t been able to participate in previous CC book club discussions, but I look forward to this one. Thanks for choosing this wonderful book!</p>

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<p>Really looking forward to reading this one! </p>

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I’ve started Station Eleven and so far, so good. For anyone considering joining the discussion, you should have no trouble finishing the book by Feb. 1.

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I’m finding it to be a fast (and fascinating) read!

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Here I finished the book early and I’m not sure I can join the discussion!! :frowning: H & I will be away on 2/1 (returning 2/5) so my participation depends on whether one or both of us is bringing a computer/tablet.

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Finished it over the weekend and looking forward to the discussion.

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@CBBBlinker if past discussions are any indication we’ll probably still be talking on the 5th. I finished and think there will be quite a bit to talk about!

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Just finished with a day to spare! Looking forward to the discussion.

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Welcome to February (you should see the snow outside my window this morning!) and to our discussion of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

I loved this book and have been recommending it to others. I enjoy some of our CC titles because they are impressive feats (e.g., The Luminaries), others because they fill a gap in my literary education (The Bridge of San Luis Rey), and still others because they introduce me to a work that I would never have picked up on my own (Enders Game). But my favorite selections are the books that I can’t put down once I’ve started, and Station Eleven falls into that category.

Discussion Questions

  1. Now that you’ve read the entire novel, go back and reread the passage by Czeslaw Milosz that serves as an epigraph. What does it mean? Why did Mandel choose it to introduce *Station Eleven*?
  2. Does the novel have a main character? Who would you consider it to be?
  3. Arthur Leander dies while performing King Lear, and the Traveling Symphony performs Shakespeare’s works. On page 57, Mandel writes, “Shakespeare was the third born to his parents, but the first to survive infancy. Four of his siblings died young. His son, Hamnet, died at eleven and left behind a twin. Plague closed the theaters again and again, death flickering over the landscape.” How do Shakespearean motifs coincide with those of *Station Eleven*, both the novel and the comic?
  4. Arthur’s death happens to coincide with the arrival of the Georgia Flu. If Jeevan had been able to save him, it wouldn’t have prevented the apocalypse. But how might the trajectory of the novel been different?
  5. What is the metaphor of the *Station Eleven* comic books? How does the Undersea connect to the events of the novel?
  6. “Survival is insufficient,” a line from Star Trek: Voyager, is the Traveling Symphony’s motto. What does it mean to them?
  7. On page 62, the prophet discusses death: “I’m not speaking of the tedious variations on physical death. There’s the death of the body, and there’s the death of the soul. I saw my mother die twice.” Knowing who his mother was, what do you think he meant by that?
  8. Certain items turn up again and again, for instance the comic books and the paperweight—things Arthur gave away before he died, because he didn’t want any more possessions. And Clark’s Museum of Civilization turns what we think of as mundane belongings into totems worthy of study. What point is Mandel making?
  9. On a related note, some characters—like Clark—believe in preserving and teaching about the time before the flu. But in Kirsten’s interview with François Diallo, we learn that there are entire towns that prefer not to: “We went to a place once where the children didn’t know the world had ever been different . . . ” (page 115). What are the benefits of remembering, and of not remembering?
  10. What do you think happened during the year Kirsten can’t remember?
  11. In a letter to his childhood friend, Arthur writes that he’s been thinking about a quote from Yeats, “Love is like the lion’s tooth” (page 158). What does this mean, and why is he thinking about it?
  12. How does the impending publication of those letters affect Arthur?
  13. On page 206, Arthur remembers Miranda saying “I regret nothing,” and uses that to deepen his understanding of Lear, “a man who regrets everything,” as well as his own life. How do his regrets fit into the larger scope of the novel? Other than Miranda, are there other characters that refuse to regret?
  14. Throughout the novel, those who were alive during the time before the flu remember specific things about those days: the ease of electricity, the taste of an orange. In their place, what do you think you’d remember most?
  15. What do you imagine the Traveling Symphony will find when they reach the brightly lit town to the south?
  16. The novel ends with Clark, remembering the dinner party and imagining that somewhere in the world, ships are sailing. Why did Mandel choose to end the novel with him?
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I’ve been thinking about the first question…

The epigraph is part of a longer poem. Emily St. John Mandel tweeted that “licensing said epigraph was a Kafka-esque experience, so final book has a shorter fair-use-length excerpt.” Here is an extended version, which makes the connection to Station Eleven even stronger:

Warm wind in the palm leaves, and I think of snow
In my distant province where things happened
That belong to another, inconceivable life.
The bright side of the planet moves toward darkness
And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,
And for me, now as then, it is too much.
There is too much world.

I thought of Kirsten when I went back to read the poem…the snow falling onstage as her final memory of the old world, and her ongoing struggle to understand her role in the new one. I think there is more comfort in the poem than despair-- the constancy of the turning of the Earth, and of cities falling asleep (not dying), is reassuring.

Researching Czeslaw Milosz (whom I’d never heard of) brought more complexity to the poem and made me aware of what an appropriate choice it was:

^ This echoes themes in Station Eleven, as does this quote from Milosz’s book The Captive Mind: “The work of human thought should withstand the test of brutal, naked reality. If it cannot, it is worthless. Probably only those works are worthwhile which can preserve their validity even for a man threatened with instant death.”

The following is from an old interview with Milosz (who died in 2004). I thought of The Traveling Symphony performing Shakespeare after the collapse:

Milosz’s comment about writing “under a kind of compulsion during the occupation” reminded me of Jeevan’s brother Frank, writing tirelessly day after day on a seemingly pointless book, as the world fell to pieces around him—as if he, too, had “taken on the burden of the writers who died.”

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I also loved the book and have been waiting impatiently for this discussion! The questions are giving me a lot to think about. For me, the epigraph in the book was sad and foreboding. Reading the more extended version of the passage (thanks for posting it, @Mary13) intensifies that feeling for me because of the phrase “where things happened that belong to another, inconceivable life.” One of the things the author did most effectively in this book was portraying, often in just a short sentence, the enormity of the change wrought by the flu, making the world as it was inconceivable.

As to who is the main character - that’s a tough one. I want to say Kirsten because she is the survivor whose viewpoint takes us through the part of the book set after the flu, and she seems to define the concept of survival. I was perfectly ready for the main character to be Jeevan because the beginning of the book was so strong. He seemed like a hero-figure I wanted to stay with, and it was good to meet him again at the end.

I don’t know quite what to make of the Arthur character and look forward to what other readers have to say about him. I most identified with Miranda and felt a loss when her story ended.

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@frazzled1, I also lean toward Kirsten as the main character. She is there for the beginning, middle and end of the story. Her life is touched in some way by all the other principal characters, both those who survived and those who did not: with Arthur and Jeevan at the production of King Lear, with Miranda through “Station Eleven,” with Elizabeth through her son Tyler (the Prophet), and with Clark at the end, helping her to solve some lingering mysteries.

When Jeevan first set out on foot, I thought the novel would return to him periodically ala The Road, but he ends up as a rather peripheral character as the story progresses. I was glad to see that he had survived and, in a sense, thrived. As a local “doctor,” he fulfills his pre-collapse EMT dream in a way I’m sure he never expected.

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I really enjoyed Station Eleven. Great book! I also pick Kirsten as the main character. I loved how Mandel used Kirsten to link all the stories together.

I like Jeevan’s character. I was happy when Mandel brought him back into the story. I wanted to know what happened to him. Jeevan is a character I would use to answer question #13 - Other than Miranda, are there other characters that refuse to regret? - Jeevan was happy with his life and, as Mary said, he fulfilled his dreams, both career and family.

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I thought Arthur could be considered the main character - everything in the after flu life seemed to go back to him.

Did anyone think that they’d have figured more out in 15 years than what they did? If anyone ever read One Second After, life in a small NC town after an EMP it gave me another insight on what they’re actually facing - not just the electricity, but food, water, society breaking down, etc.

Question 9 - I don’t know how you ever try and forget the time before flu. I don’t know how you give up on figuring out electricity and modern medicine.

As for what I’d miss most? Electricity and everything it supports.

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I think you can make a case for Arthur - even though he’s not alive during the entire post plague section of the book - he’s never far away. You are always aware of his presence and how he’s influenced (for better or worse) everyone whose lives he touched. Because of the way the book is structured he’s on page one, and Clark is remembering the dinner party with him in the last chapter via the comic book by Arthur’s first ex-wife.

The Jeevan character didn’t work that well for me, mostly because we see him at the beginning and he gets dropped for so long. We don’t really have anything invested in him by the time we drop back into his life. It seemed nice to know he’d turned out okay and of course we hear that the prophet was there five years before the final events of the book. It seemed more contrived than most of the events in the book. (And much as I liked the book it all seemed very contrived!)

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Back at you … though here the sun shines and I’m barefoot and in shorts with the temp at 70 degrees. I think looking out my window at snow would be cool - ha - in more ways than one, I guess.

Kirsten … yeah, maybe … but what about Clark as main character? Through his eyes, we learn so much about Arthur, Miranda, Elizabeth, Tyler. His paperweight travels from the Arthur/Miranda marriage to the Lear performance and beyond. Clark has an innate kindness, able to throw a lifeline to Miranda at the disastrous dinner party and later to Kirsten when she arrives depleted at the airport. His survival spins out so differently from that of Jeevan and Kirsten and he takes on the role of keeping the past alive with him.

If I did the symbolic thing (and I don’t, really) Clark’s paperweight takes on a certain significance … a weight of its own, if you will. Miranda returns it to Arthur when she no longer needs it. Arthur just passes it along to his latest with little thought. It ends in Kirsten’s hands and seems to give her the comfort it gave Miranda.

Funny how we each seem to gravitate toward a different main character.

Like Mary and Caraid, Jeevan’s reappearance pleased me. (I had that brief moment when I wondered if Jeevan would turn out to be the Prophet. Jeevan had disappeared from the narrative and I feared he had just turned up. Then I realized the ages wouldn’t match up and knew it was to be Tyler.)

  1. What do you think happened during the year Kirsten can’t remember?

Nothing good.

And I too loved the book.