Station Eleven Discussion Questions

Discuss how the author writes about memory in Station Eleven. Different characters discuss or ruminate on what memory means to them: Arthur on his last day of life, Kirsten thinking about her first year on the road, Frank’s anonymous philanthropist, the Prophet, Clark, and more. Do memories of the past help or hinder? Do characters cling to them or try to forget? What do these ideas about memory say about humanity and what matters?

By creating a novel in two worlds, Before and After, the author allows space to discuss the role of memory in people’s lives. But her focus on memory is not limited to the characters who survive the collapse. The novel begins with Arthur’s death, and ends with his last day alive, a day where he spends much time remembering his life and pondering his mistakes. Before he dies, he makes a series of decisions about what he believes will be the rest of his life, thinking to himself: “He will be known as the man who gave his fortune away.” The thought gives him some peace.

Jeevan’s brother Frank is another whose memories inform his decisions. Having survived a war zone and a crippling injury, he understands that life will be reduced to survival, at least for a while, and he has no interest in experiencing that again. His decision to kill himself is based in part on his memories of what survival entails and on what he considers a life worth living.

Post-collapse, Kirsten often thinks that she is lucky not to remember everything that happened that first violent and terrible year on the road. She also believes that life post-collapse is hardest on those who remember everything. At the same time, she seeks out all information she can find about Arthur Leander, because one of her only early memories of the time before includes being in his dressing room at the theater. This pattern—clinging to some memories while actively suppressing others—allows her to survive.

Compare and contrast the characters of Kirsten and the Prophet. They are the same age and have each come through their own experiences during the collapse in specific ways. How are they similar? How are they different?

Both Kirsten and the Prophet were children when the pandemic wiped out the world as they knew it. Both traveled with family members: Kirsten with her older brother, who died after a year from an infection, and the Prophet with his mother Elizabeth, who died at some point after they left the Severn City airport. But whereas Kirsten found a family with the Traveling Symphony, who took her in when she was 14, the Prophet found a darker path. For Kirsten, joining the Symphony meant not only a community, but also a way to do what she loves best in the world, which is acting. They remain in a territory that is known to them; the rumors of violence and danger in areas beyond their region keep them constrained but safe. The Prophet, they learn, has spent much time in the violent south: whatever he had to do to survive reinforced the terrible tactics he lived by.

In their first meeting at St. Deborah, the Prophet refers to traveling the road and remembering everything he has ever seen. In contrast, Kirsten often notes the fact that she does not remember what she saw on the road, and considers that a blessing. And yet both of them are connected: to Arthur Leander, to Dr. Eleven, and to the Symphony and its future. At the end, Kirsten and the Prophet face each other; they both quote Dr. Eleven. Kirsten quotes the line, spoken by someone in the Undersea, “We long only for the world we were born into,” and the Prophet replies, “but it’s too late for that.” Moments later, he is killed by one of his own followers, a boy who is too broken by the world the Prophet created to survive.

After the Prophet’s death, Kirsten realizes, perhaps in an echo of the Prophet’s own words back in St. Deborah, that he had grown up on the road, just like her. Unlike her, however, he had carried the brutal memories with him. Whereas she had found art, he had only ever found survival.

Arthur Leander dies in the first chapter of the novel, yet one could argue he is one of the main characters. How does he influence the story even after his death? In what ways does his singular death stand in for the millions of deaths that will follow?

The shock caused by the death of Arthur Leander onstage is ironic because everyone in the theater who was toasting Arthur after his passing—and indeed 99 percent of the rest of the world—dies within the next three weeks. And yet, Arthur’s story still matters. By using a plot structure of intertwining timelines, the author allows readers to see the effect of Arthur’s life and his actions on people long after not only his own death, but after the collapse of civilization. His small kindnesses to Kirsten inform much of her post-pandemic life, as she searches for hints about him in the abandoned houses and buildings that remain. His failure as a parent plays a role in his son Tyler’s development, contributing to the process that turns a withdrawn boy into a violent cult leader. Even his failed first marriage played a part in Miranda’s creation of Dr. Eleven, a comic that, despite never being published, becomes so important to several people in the post-pandemic world.

By beginning with Arthur’s death, Mandel also creates poignancy with the events of Arthur’s life that are later shared; he dies with three divorces and one distant son, so his earlier moments of optimism or reflection are understood through that context. The life and death of the one character, told out of order and exploring his ambitions, selfishness, kindnesses, and regrets, is held up in contrast to the millions and millions of deaths that happened in the hours, days, weeks, and months that followed. The mass deaths did not have paramedics, paparazzi, lawyers making phone calls, or New York Times obituaries. Throughout the novel, other characters die on the page, from Miranda to Dieter to the Prophet. By sharing the details of Arthur’s last day, the author creates an intimacy that makes the millions of other deaths more personal, even while the scope of them is unimaginable. Arthur’s optimism on his last day of life mirrors the optimism Clark and others feel at the end of the novel: that a way forward may be possible after all.

Compare the world of Dr. Eleven with the post-pandemic world. What similarities and differences are there? How do the people in Undersea compare with people after the collapse?

The world of Miranda’s comic, a space station built to look like a planet, and life on Earth after the pandemic have obvious connections. The geography is different: life on Station Eleven is in a perpetual twilight, while the Traveling Symphony moves through oppressive midsummer heat and sunshine. And Station Eleven is created after a hostile alien race invades Earth, which, unlike a virus, implies an active antagonist rather than a deadly natural disaster. But despite these differences, some areas align. At Station Eleven, the Undersea is made up of people who are tired of the exile, who want to return to Earth and beg for amnesty. Miranda writes, ‘They are always waiting, the people of the Undersea. They spend all their lives waiting for their lives to begin.’

In the post-collapse world, Kirsten often thinks that the people who struggle the most are the one who remember most about life before. She talks about the different communities the Symphony travels through, some who seek to gather as much information about the past as possible, and others that try to forget that there was ever another way to live. The line from Dr. Eleven that is quoted again and again highlights the connection between what has been lost since the pandemic and what exists in the comic: “I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.”

While post-pandemic life still exists on Earth, for many of the characters, it feels so completely like a different world that they could be on a space station, a world built to resemble Earth, but only offering a pale imitation. The sense of longing for a place that no longer exists is at the core of the Dr. Eleven comics and also at the core of the novel. And like the comic, the characters in the novel have different reactions; some fight to return, even if there is nothing to return to, while others admit the loss is permanent.

Discuss the role of objects in Dr. Eleven. From costumes to the glass paperweight, from the items in the Museum of Civilization to the televisions, how does the author use objects to further the story?

In the world after the collapse, scarcity contrasts with the excesses of the modern world. Electricity, gas, Internet, and running water all disappear, and items are repurposed to suit the new world. At Severn City airport, airplanes are used for storage, housing, food management, and more. For the Traveling Symphony, old trucks are stripped of everything extraneous, like engines, and fitted out as wagons pulled by horses. But perhaps what is as striking as what is gone is what remains. Copies of Shakespeare’s plays still exist, so the company can rehearse and keep sharing the shows. In abandoned houses, wedding dresses and tuxedos are salvaged to make costumes. And for those who survive, the items they keep with them, from the musicians’ instruments to Kirsten’s paperweight and comics, underscore their belief that survival is insufficient.

The glass paperweight is an object whose very existence is frivolous, and yet it manages to survive and travel farther than ever expected: from Clark to Arthur as a gift, then to Miranda, who takes it when she and Arthur divorce, then back to Arthur years later, who then gives it to Tanya in the theater the day he dies, then to Kirsten who somehow keeps it with her as she and her brother travel post-collapse. The paperweight is, quite literally, dead weight, yet she keeps it with her, illustrating the role of art as more than a luxury, but a necessity.