Station Eleven Summary and Analysis

Section One Summary The Theater

The novel opens on stage: aging movie actor Arthur is playing King Lear in Toronto. He suffers a heart attack, and audience member Jeevan, who is training to be a paramedic, tries to help. Despite his efforts, Arthur dies. A young girl, Kirsten, who plays one of Lear’s daughters, is alone and upset, as her wrangler is missing. Jeevan helps her locate Tanya, and they disappear. Later, Tanya gives Kirsten a glass paperweight to distract her from the tragedy.

Jeevan heads out into the snowstorm, talking briefly to the paparazzi, who were his colleagues before he changed careers. He doesn’t tell them of Arthur’s death but instead calls his girlfriend. They argue, and Jeevan walks through the snow, avoiding going home. As he walks, he gets a call from a doctor friend who warns him that there is a pandemic spreading fast, called the Georgia flu, and that Jeevan should take precautions. He then calls back, even more worried, telling Jeevan to get out of the city immediately. Jeevan goes to a grocery store and loads multiple shopping carts with food and water, then drags them to his brother’s apartment.

At the theater, the remaining cast and crew have a drink and toast Arthur while discussing his three failed marriages and his son, who lives with his mother in Jerusalem. They decide to call Arthur’s lawyer.

In Malaysia, Miranda, Arthur’s first wife, receives a call from Clark, Arthur’s oldest friend, telling her that Arthur is dead. Miranda, a global shipping executive, ruminates on what it’s like to learn that someone you expected to grow old with has died.

By the end of the section, readers learn that everyone toasting Arthur at the theater died within three weeks and that when Miranda received Clark’s phone call, the world was one month from the end of global communication. It ends with an incomplete list of things that are gone after the pandemic, from chlorinated pools to not worrying about dying from infection.

Section One Analysis The Theater

By opening on stage, with a Shakespearean play and the unexpected death of one character, the novel is setting up ongoing themes of art and survival and civilization. Arthur’s death sends shockwaves throughout his circle of friends, and yet within weeks, they will almost all be dead. But this doesn’t imply that Arthur’s death is irrelevant: throughout the novel, through scenes that travel back 30 years in the past and others that go forward 20 years in the future, Arthur’s life intertwines with it all.

The themes of theater and art, of performance and spectacle, are constant throughout the novel. That Arthur died on stage, in the midst of a performance, made his death a kind of spectacle. But at the same time, the author is dropping hints that death on a whole other scale is coming. Elements of art and civilization—a beautiful paperweight and a beloved play—make their first appearance in this section; they will return throughout the novel, symbolizing the power of art.