Station Eleven Summary and Analysis

Section Eight Summary The Prophet and Station Eleven

In Year Twenty, Kirsten and August are near the airport when they encounter the Prophet’s men, who are holding Sayid captive. Kirsten and August surprise the men, and August kills one immediately. The other man lives long enough to explain that the Prophet’s men took the Symphony members to trade for Eleanor, the stowaway. Sayid tells them that Dieter is dead and how the clarinetist escaped. The perspective changes and readers learn how the clarinetist had made it back to the Symphony, warning them that they had to change course immediately, leading to the shift in plans that left Kirsten and August alone.

Kirsten, August, and Sayid continue toward the airport, hiding when they hear the Prophet approaching. His dog finds Kirsten in the brush, and she comes out unarmed to face the Prophet and his companions, including the boy who had asked to leave with the Symphony back at St. Deborah. Kirsten realizes she will be killed; August, who is still hidden with the injured Sayid, has no way to save her. In the distance they hear horses.

The Prophet quotes the Dr. Eleven comics, to Kristen’s shock, and she quotes it back to him. The boy, distraught, shoots the Prophet, then shoots himself. The forward scouts of the Symphony appear. August, Kirsten, and Sayid continue toward the airport, with the Symphony coming behind them. Charlie is the scout at the entrance and the friends have an emotional reunion.

At the airport, Kirsten meets Clark, who says that he wants to show her something. They climb to the top of the air traffic control tower, where he directs her to look south through a telescope. She sees something that appeared during the previous week: a grid of electric lights.

The scene shifts to Jeevan, who is 1,000 miles south of the airport, living a happy and bucolic life with his wife and children. While it is still primitive, with outdoor ovens and meat preserved in cold water, life is peaceful and happy.

The narrative returns to the day of Arthur’s death, hours before the scene that opens the novel. He makes a series of decisions, some monumental, some small: to quit acting and retire, to move to Israel to be closer to Tyler, to give the young woman he’s dating money to pay off her student loans, and to give his remaining copies of Miranda’s Dr. Eleven comics to the young actress Kirsten. He also talks to Tyler on the phone, where his son eagerly discusses Dr. Eleven with him. This is a window into Arthur’s thoughts, disappointments, and hopes for the future, even as he collapses onstage, just hours before the world as he knew it ends.

The book closes back in Year Twenty, five weeks after Kirsten’s arrival at the airport. The Symphony is departing toward the electric lights in the distance. Kirsten leaves one of her copies of Dr. Eleven with Clark, at the Museum of Civilization, in case anything happens to her on the road. Clark reads it and imagines Miranda drawing it, years ago, and their world that could possibly be starting anew.

Section Eight Analysis The Prophet and Station Eleven

These final sections tie all the disparate plot strands together, from the events that sent the Dr. Eleven comics into the hands of the Prophet and Kirsten, to Charlie and her family’s story since their disappearance from St. Deborah. It is a hopeful and positive ending, despite the fact that the final chapter brings the reader back to Arthur’s death.

The post-collapse world seems to be rebuilding itself, the characters are reunited—Kirsten and August with the Symphony, the Symphony with Sayid and the others, Charlie with the group—and new connections are forged. Arthur’s life is presented as a mixture: He is successful at fulfilling his ambitions but full of disappointment over his poor choices and lost connections. And yet on the last day of his life, he is optimistic, seeing a future that offers him hope in his last moments.

Still, the brutality of the new world is present and is underscored by the discussion of Kirsten earning her knife tattoos and her sadness at having to get another one for killing one of the Prophet’s men. The loss of Dieter, who had represented the safety and kindness she found in the Symphony years earlier, weighs on her. For her and many of the characters, comfort comes from art, even in this time of survival.

The intersection of art and survival is evident in the conflict with the Prophet and his men. When Kirsten looks at the man she kills, she recognizes him from the audience in St. Deborah where he had clapped and smiled at the show. When the Prophet recognizes her, he calls her Titania, for the role she played. And their final exchange consists of Dr. Eleven quotes, words that so affect the young disciple that he kills the Prophet and himself. His actions and his death are the direct result of both what he has had to do for survival and the power of art to show him another path.

Kirsten also recognizes that the Prophet is roughly her age and, unlike her, might have the terrible misfortune to remember every dark horror that happened to him after the collapse. Several times in the novel, Kirsten remarks on how little she remembers from the early years and how grateful she is for that fact. The Prophet, she realizes, might have had to walk through all that darkness every day.

Clark, who is literally the keeper of civilization through his museum, is the last character mentioned in the novel. He is the oldest, lucky enough to reach old age in relative comfort and to imagine a world coming back gradually, lights and ships moving toward each other again.