It is common knowledge that one of our natural instincts as humans is to find purpose in our lives. Without a purpose in our lives, we often lack a reason to continue living and in extreme circumstances, take our own lives because of this lack of purpose. In the novel “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel, the author goes back and forth between a world similar to our own and that same world post-apocalypse. In the novel, the apocalypse occurs when the Georgia flu outbreak occurs. In the modern world before the Georgia flu, many people lack purpose, and are said to be sleepwalking through life. Characters like Jeevan, Clark, Kirsten, and Tyler find their purpose in the book, but mostly after the outbreak occurs. After the flu wipes …show more content…
When Clark speaks with Dahlia, she mentions that even if Clark changed her boss, he would still be unhappy with his life. She also mentions that most people are “high-functioning sleepwalkers” (162-163). This conversation occurs before the flu when much of society is depicted to be absorbed by technology. The concept of high-functioning sleepwalkers is that people trick themselves into thinking that their work is their purpose even when they do not like it. This makes them believe that they have a reason to live, even when they are not actually self-aware. The main characters that were alive before the epidemic begin to realize that most people have no purpose and that nobody is truly present in society. These characters then end up finding their purpose after they survive the epidemic. For example, after the apocalypse, Jeevan becomes a doctor. When Jeevan was asked why he wanted to become a paramedic before the epidemic, he said that he wanted to do something that matters (10). Another example is Clark’s decision to preserve the old world. After the epidemic, Clark preserves the old world’s artifacts, thus creating the museum of civilization. The museum of civilization is important to the habitants of the world post-apocalypse because it reminds them of who they used to be as a society and the mistakes they in the previous world. The museum then gives purpose to others because it motivated people to re-establish themselves as a people as well as what they had lost with the
Being hopeful is an eye opening experience that encourages people to move forward in a difficult situation. The author of the book Station Eleven is Emily St. John Mandel is a novel that details this exact thing. This novel has these three characters that demonstrate a sense hope; Kirsten, Clark, and Jeevan. Kirsten’s hopefulness in this novel is to have civilization restored which gives her a positive look on things. Clark makes the Museum of civilization to help remain positive and give other people a sense of hope that things are going to be ok. Jeevan always has hope that he can help people with his medical experience and that he’ll do everything he can to help them. These three characters have a huge understanding of what it means to have hope and to never give up. By examining the characters in station eleven, it is clear that many of the characters had a feeling of hope which encouraged them to persevere in hard situations.
In Mandel’s Station 11, he envisions a time in which civilization is wiped off the face of Earth due to a flu epidemic. The book describes an area called the Museum of Civilization, which is a museum which collects things that have lost their worth since the fall of man. In the event of a collapse, the item best suited for the exhibit at the Museum of Civilization is a dusty baseball mitt. This item is a good candidate for the museum due to all of the history of baseball, which the mitt expresses. Firstly, the mitt will remind people of the pre-epidemic era in which baseball played an integral role.. In addition, the baseball mitt will act as a tool for teaching the post-collapse era children of the previous era. The baseball mitt will serve both as a educational tool and a way of remembering the past.
In the book Clark is Arthur’s close friend. Both Arthur and Clark attempt to make it in the acting world, Clark ends up taking the position of a job training executive before the collapse. After the collapse he finds himself stranded in the Severn City Airport. After he spends some time in the airport he begins to collect technology and other items that exemplified the past. He pulls all of the collection together to form the Museum of Civilization and curates it. Him creating the museum is an example of him attempting to remember the past. Clark often does little things to remember the past, on page 276 Mandel writes this about him, “His dear friend Annette had died of an unknown
As the city of Chicago prepped for the 1893 World’s Fair Columbian Exposition, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World, people all over the world brought artifacts to the city. To keep these artifacts in the city long after the Exposition ended, Edward Ayer and Marshall Field established the Columbian Museum. Built using Field’s money, Columbian Museum would go on to house world artifacts as well as function as a research institution. As time passed, the museum eventually changed names to the Field Museum of Natural History and moved buildings to its much larger current location on Museum Campus. Today, the Field Museum continues to be an innovating research institution and stable of the Chicagoland community.
The hero, or quester, in the novel Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is the shakespearean actress Kirsten Raymonde who is about 28 years old and a member of the Traveling Symphony: a performance group dedicated to preserving human culture after the collapse of civilization 20 years prior due to the highly infectious and deadly Georgia Flu. The destination of her personal quest, and the quest of the symphony at large, is a small post-apocalyptic settlement called St. Deborah by the Water. The simple reason they are going there is because it is one of the dozens of towns that they routinely visit as they travel a repeating, established circuit performing Shakespeare’s plays and classical music. The main problem en-route to St. Deborah by the Water is the interpersonal grudges that occur within people
Throughout the book, the author points out the lives of characters and what obstacles they go through which leads them to choose a different style of life by running away, giving up their
Throughout the survival unit, there was a loss. Sometimes that loss was greater than death itself. The characters had to overcome their grief and move on with their lives. They did this with the help of the people around them. Being reminded of they person they were and the person they lost is what sparked their recovery.
Is just surviving enough for humans if they have no other purpose? Throughout the novel Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel portrays arts, connections and direction as something of immense value to human life. The arts in this book help build connections with people, it’s presence keeping society intact by giving them a purpose. Mandel demonstrates this by using characters struggles along their own life paths, making art’s role in society very clear.
Station Eleven is a dystopian novel by Emily St. John Mandel. It follows a pandemic that kills 99% of the population, the Georgia flu, the fact that it made a dystopia shows how broken the world is, people made new small towns, some of them it was a world of potential violence survival seems hard. This essay will prove that survival is insufficient. One example proving that survival is insufficient is Tyler, the son of Elizabeth Colton and Arthur Leander who became the profit later in life, but later left with his mom with a group of wonders because they wanted to find more than stay at the airport. In chapter 44 Tyler is found reading the Book of Revelations and saying that he wants them to know that the pandemic “happened for a reason,” and
In Station Eleven, Emily Mandel depicts a viral pandemic that kills humans leaving the world in a dystopian era. Survivors must learn to adapt new cultural techniques and live without modern technology. Throughout this amazing book Emily Mandel focus from pass to present telling stories of the main characters and their strange connections with famous film start Arthur Leander. Each Section in this book has meaning and it takes you back and makes you wonder “How would our lives change if there wasn’t technology or electricity”?
In Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, Station Eleven, a terrifyingly powerful virus called the “Georgia Flu” sweeps across the world taking out almost every victim it touches. A team of musicians, actors, and backstage members make their way across a pandemic stricken land while hunting, performing, and surviving. They call themselves the “Traveling Symphony”. They’ve been traveling since nearly the beginning of the pandemic, finding and losing members as they go. Throughout the novel, there are several plot lines which run in different directions throughout different time periods, but one consistent theme that ties each twisting plot together throughout the entire novel is that “survival is insufficient”, a quote adopted from Star Trek.
In order to survive, there must be the basic needs of life, water, food, and shelter. In order to live, there must be a love or passion for something important to a person. In Station Eleven, it is argued that someone must have something to hold on to, that keeps their lives interesting, worthwhile and help them do more than just survive. There are two different ways that “not living” can be viewed, one is only having the bare minimum to stay alive. The other is having more than someone would need to survive but not paying attention or caring about what is around them.
I had an opportunity to visit the oriental institute museum . During my visit to the museum I was made aware of its location and the importance of it to chicago. The museum housed many exhibits of historical value dating civilization back to the paleolithic period of 2,500,000-100,000 B.C. Below you'll find examples of mans rise through the use of tools and refined skills from cave living to structured living throughout evolution. This is an experience that has grounded me to a new interest in structures that we have devised to become the homes we use today for the rest of my life.
Being seen as a community leader in the offering of knowledge and learning opportunities, it adds value to the museum and forms a positive attitude among community members towards an organization.
Museums serve as a way to connect with the public on a large scale, and the knowledge held within exhibits can be a fruitful experience for those who choose to visit these institutions. Experiencing all that a museum has to offer, no matter how well intentioned, can at times be confusing and overwhelming to the individuals visiting the site. The Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian dedicates itself to Native Americans in North and South America, and worked tirelessly with varying tribes to create a new standard. Some visitors and scholars found their work to be successful in design and approach while others found it to be lacking in execution. This institution does not approach Native American history in a familiar fashion; however it does cover an expansive period of time, and produces a great amount of detail while generating powerful emotions.