I think that feeling about Arthur was fairly unanimous! I didnât care for King Lear either. Both are selfish men, with no real understanding of the women who are closest to them. I mention Lear because I assume we are supposed to be drawing some connection between the two men. The difference is that King Lear shows the descent of a great man. The only âgreatnessâ that Arthur achieved was the shallow Hollywood kind.
I think so! The charactersâ paths crossed in many ways. Only Jeevan seemed to be fully removed from the others. Although something tells me that if we were to keep following the Traveling Symphony on their journey south, they might one day end up meeting him. When 99.9% of the population is dead, it really is a small world.
To anyone who might be concerned about my shingles, I donât have a bad case. The nerve pain bothers me a little during the night, but not at all during the day.
I may be going out on a limb here and while I donât think Arthur was a great man, I think that he was brought down by stardom, fan worship, fameâwhatever you want to call it. If you remember, in the beginning of his career he took pride in his acting and it was when he went to Hollywood and became famous that he became more concerned about his image. It must be difficult to maintain a ânormalâ life when you canât go anywhere because youâre hounded by photographers/fans/celebrity seekers. You end up, Iâd think, living in a bubble. It seems to me thatâs what happened to Arthur. I think as he became more famous, he became more self-centered and shallow.
Good to hear your shingles arenât too bad, @NJTheatreMOMâ. I hope you feel all the way better quickly.
The survival of music and theater in this book is my favorite part. I love how whole towns show up for performances. Survivors appreciate the beauty of the art and are happy that it has been preserved.
I believe Arthur saw his flaws. He just couldnât fix them. He lost himself when he became famous. He asked to be buried back in Toronto, the place he was happiest, the place he learned his craft, and the place he became friends with Clark. Canada was home. He fell for Miranda because she was from the same island. He wrote to Victoria also because she was a friend from his island. He felt they were the people who really knew and understood him. I think he used both of them to help him hold onto his past. He was a weak person.
I donât particularly like the Arthur we meet but I think Bromfield and Caraid make a good good point. Remember the conversation when Arthurâs lawyer calls Clark to tell him of Arthurâs death:
Jeevin was connected to Elizabeth and the prophet monster. He wrote the tabloid story about Arthur leaving Elizabeth and, even though he gave Arthur time to tell Elizabeth, reading it within hours had to be hurtful and may well have contributed to a spiral.
Iâm so enjoying reading your comments. I finished the book about a month ago. As said upthread, the image of the sealed plane on the runway is what I will probably remember most about the book.
But, and maybe itâs because Iâm an expat at the moment, the scene of Miranda sitting on the beach in Malaysia, waiting for the ships to move, is the most haunting to me.
I didnât find it believable that everyone stayed on that plane. I guess since the disease killed so quickly, it could happen but unless the last people were standing in front of the doors with guns, I think someone would have forced his or her way out of there.
Someone mentioned the first year being completely glossed over. Now that I give it consideration - I am glad it was skipped. We can all imagine that first year being complete chaos with the worst of humanity being front and center. I donât think the characters were even really that critical - I know everyone is critiquing the lack of character development. I donât think the characters were in and of themselves so important. I disliked the prophet storyline most of all. But I can imagine how important that traveling symphony was - can you imagine living in a town and having something like that come to town? How youâd need a little entertainment, something from your previous worldâŠand wouldnât you want to hear from the cast how things were in different settlements? I think why I liked the book was it made it very easy to imagine putting yourself in that world. Which settlement would you want to belong? Iâd probably want to be in the airport - with toilets and reminders of the previous world and a large group of people. Or Iâd live in someoneâs house. With most of the population wiped out youâd think if there were survivors theyâd live in neighborhoods or apartment buildings, not in tents.
I am reminded of a question I had throughout. Why didnât people continue to live in houses? I assume it was because some felt vulnerable because houses were routinely looted so they would have to be on guard all the time. I guess others didnât feel comfortable living in a dead familyâs house but Iâd think they could get past that. Other reasons?
Thatâs left to the imagination (which makes it all the more horrible, in my mind):
Yes â I think the âCan you imagine?â question is such an important element of post-apocalyptic novels. Part of the fun (sick fun, but fun nonetheless) is relating the story to your own life. Where would I go? How would I react? What kind of people would I align myself with? Could I survive under such harsh circumstances?
Re living arrangements, it seems like itâs mostly those on the road and inside the airport who use tents. In the scattered communities, people appear to be living together in solid buildings like Walmarts and Wendys, possibly for protection, but also because the less sturdy structures are dangerous: ââŠall the roofs are collapsing now and soon none of the old buildings will be safeâ (p. 130).
And to know youâd never get home, even though most likely no one you loved is left and everything has changed.
Mary13, thanks, I did see that acknowledgment of Parryâs article. Our shipment was caught in Singapore for several weeks on its way from Alaska to Perth, so even that part resonated right away.
By the way, thanks Mary13. I had never heard of this book before seeing it on cc. I enjoyed it. I think (like many) try to envision what it would be like if I survivedâŠ
The last line suggests that it wouldnât much matter if you survived the deadly virus, because without adequate staff, ââ441 nuclear plants would briefly run on autopilot until they overheated,â says Weisman. âThe spilling of radioactivity would be formidable, and it would last, in the case of enriched uranium, into geologic time.ââ
I read a lot of dystopian literature, and I found Station Eleven to be the âquietestâ post-apocalyptic novel Iâve ever read. Many of these kinds of books do deal with that first year, because that setting is rich in tragedy, in posing questions to ourselves about what weâd do, what kind of people we would be (and theyâre often rollicking funâWorld War Z, The Passage). I liked that we entered this world after the worst has happened, so that we can see how and what people have become, and whether they have choices, and what they value.
I did not dislike the character of Arthur as much as some of you do. I found one of the themes of the book to be the value of art-- music, and acting-- for cultures, as constants. Arthurâs early career showed the potential of his art for the world, and the middle of his career showed its corruption in modern culture. The end of his career showed that his arc ended in more pure acting, back on the stage. I too think he did have the flu. I thought that was obvious, in how ill he was before the last performance. I thought it fitting that he might have been Patient Zero for the theater.
I thought the writing was lovely, not so much for the language, which usually affects me the most (and I thought there were some gorgeous passages), but more for the images she brought to life. I too was haunted by the doomed airliner, and the image of the little boy reading to its passengers. The dead cargo ships. Jeevanâs brother. These things will stay with me, I think.
The above is from one of your links, Mary. Thatâs what I meant about a high kill rate virus not being a very âsuccessfulâ virus. The reason Ebola spread as far as it did was because of poor health education and health care in the countries where it originated, and because it was possible for infected people to get on planes and travel halfway across the world.
I hope it clears up quickly!