English B
Category 3
Legacy as a contemporary issue in Emily St John Mandel’s ‘Station Eleven’
Research Question: To what extent is Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven a depiction of
modern society's issues with legacy and permanence?
Word Count: 3702
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Table of contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………3
Introducing the characters……………………………………………………………………..5
Jeevan……………………………………………………………………………………5
Arthur…………………………………………………………………………………….6
Kirsten……………………………………………………………………………………6
Clark……………………………………………………………………………………..7
Expanding the discussion……………………………………………………………………...9
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...15
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………….16
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Introduction
Al Pacino once said “They say we die twice. Once when the breath leaves our body,
and once when the last person we know says our name”. This quote from the movie
Stand Up Guys reminded me of how legacy is represented in the book Station Eleven,
written by Emily St. John Mandel in 2015. This body of work will discuss the presence of
legacy as a literary theme in the book, and how it depicts permanence and
impermanence of people and society as a whole.
For centuries humans have been caring about the concept of legacy: what they are
leaving behind, what they are going to be remembered for after they die. The Merriam
Webster Dictionary defines legacy as "something that happened in the past or that
comes from someone in the past"1, but we see legacy as much more valuable than that,
something that gives purpose to people, a sense of permanence. Plato argues that the
very thing that makes us human is the ability of passing on information to next
generations after we die, because if we didn’t then every generation would have to start
from zero2. Imagine if all the things Einstein found out died with him, society wouldn’t be
where it is today.
The story of Station Eleven is about the Georgia Flu, a deadly and hugely transmissible
disease that wipes out 99% of the world’s population within a year (called the collapse),
absolutely destroying every concept humans had of society, and bringing to the reader a
world where everyone has to appeal to their primal instincts and try to survive in the
best way they can.
1
2
Merriam Webster Dictionary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legacy
Plato’s theory of language https://www.jstor.org/stable/25000576
3
After reading the book for the first time, it left me thinking a lot about how legacy was
presented throughout the novel, and learning about literary themes in my higher level
English class brought light to the situation. According to Oregon State's professor, J.T.
Bushnell, a theme in literature is a central unifying idea; it is the bigger issue or concept
that emerges as the characters pursue their goals3. It has less to do with whether they
will find the treasure, win the race or defeat the bad guys, and more to do with the
deeper, more complex side of the story, involving identity, philosophy or morality. In
Station Eleven, legacy is developed as a literary theme, and one that has implications to
the relevance of legacy in modern society.
This work aims at answering the following research question: "To what extent is Emily
St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven a depiction of modern society's issues with legacy and
permanence?". To come to a plausible answer to it, I will first briefly introduce the
characters in the book and establish some initial relations between them and the main
discussion of this essay. Then, I present a longer body of analysis, relating key
passages of the book to a conceptual discussion on legacy, permanence and
impermanence, to then present my conclusions.
Introducing the characters
Jeevan
Jeevan is a very active character throughout the first chapters of the book, being
perceived as a hero of sorts, for trying to save Arthur’s life after he has a heart attack on
stage before the collapse, even though he was unsuccessful. We then see a different
3
Oregon State’s guide to Literary Terms https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-theme
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side of Jeevan: a man who is battling with his inner self, in a path to start doing
something he actually wanted to be remembered for, since he isn’t proud of the ways he
lived his life up to that point, working as a paparazzi. And it is clear how happy he gets
when he first realizes that being a paramedic is something that he actually wants to be.
“But there was, he was exhilarated, because he’d wondered all his
life what his profession should be, and now he was certain,
absolutely certain that he wanted to be a paramedic. At moments
when other people could only stare, he wanted to be the one to step
forward”
About 20 years after the collapse, we discover that Jeevan survived and lives in a
community where he serves as a doctor, and we can see that he is finally satisfied with
what he does, because he is going to be remembered as someone that helped people,
instead of stalking them for money.
Arthur
Arthur is the character that shows legacy in a way that is the closest to real life, because
he dies before the collapse. Arthur achieved what many considered to be success, he
was a rich and famous actor that would definitely be remembered by millions of people
through his movies if the Georgia Flu Pandemic didn’t happen. However, he still
seemed to be unsatisfied and worried about what he was leaving behind, which shows
a true concern in real life legacy: it is not only about how much you leave behind, but
how valuable and worth remembering it is.
Arthur, as his last action before he died, decided to give away his fortune and move to
Israel.
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“Wasn’t this what money was for? This was what his life was going
to mean, finally, after all these years of failing to win Oscars, this
string of box office flops. He would be known as the man who gave
his fortune away. He would retain only enough money to live on. He
would buy an apartment in Jerusalem and see Tyler every day and
start over.”
One would think that the legacy of a famous actor depends on his movies or shows, so
after the collapse, where there are no ways to watch anything anymore, Arthur’s legacy
would cease to exist. However, we discover that this is not actually what happened.
Kirsten has a magazine where he features in an interview, and she carries it with her for
many years after the collapse. So, in a way, Arthur’s legacy still lives through Kirsten.
Kirsten
Kirsten is the main character of the story, she was still a little girl when the pandemic
killed 99% of the world’s population. She has brief memories of how the world was
before the collapse, and they are very important to her, and Mandel refers a lot to them
throughout the story. Kirsten had to do what it took to survive, and that includes killing 3
people. She understands the concept of legacy, and we can see that clearly because
she doesn’t want to be remembered as a murderer. One time, when she was doing an
interview for a guy who likes to talk to people who pass through his little community, she
refused to talk about the people she killed, because she knew it would be registered
forever.
“If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you want that last part
recorded? It isn’t the first time I’ve heard confessions of this nature.”
“I know,” she said. “Almost everyone in the Symphony… but look, I
collect celebrity gossip clippings.” “Celebrity gossip…?” “Just about
that one actor, Arthur Leander. Because of my collection, the
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clippings, I understand something about permanent records.” “And it
isn’t something you want to be remembered for.””
Clark
Clark is a character that perhaps cherishes the most his memories from before the
collapse, and we can see that because he is the one the makes the most effort, out of
the main characters, to maintain the “old world’s” legacy preserved by building the
Museum of Civilization, and through this character it is possible to see a real life
property of legacy. He is a middle aged man who works as an interviewer for a major
company, he was in a plane when the Georgia Flu broke out, and spent all his life after
the collapse in Chicago’s Airport.
Before the collapse, Clark wandered through life in an automatic way, completely
disregarding the amazing things he had accessible to him and how those things defined
society as he knew it.
“Had Arthur seen that Clark was sleepwalking? (...) Because he
had been sleepwalking, Clark realized, moving half-asleep through
the motions of his life for a while now, years; not specifically
unhappy, but when had he last found real joy in his work? He
wished he could somehow go back and find the iPhone people
whom he’d jostled on the sidewalk earlier, apologize to them—I’m
sorry, I’ve just realized that I’m as minimally present in this world as
you are, I had no right to judge” (151).
But then, not even two weeks after the collapse, when he is stuck in an airport and all
electricity and outside communication is gone, he is left self reflecting and missing
everything that he used to unnoticed.
“Consider the snow globe. Consider the mind that invented those
miniature storms, the factory worker who turned sheets of plastic
into white flakes of snow, the hand that drew the plan for the
miniature Severn City with its church steeple and city hall, the
assembly-line worker who watched the globe glide past on a
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conveyor belt somewhere in China. Consider the white gloves on
the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes,
to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers.
Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the
ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out
a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim
light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common
profanities, the sailors’ dreams of land and women, these men for
whom the ocean was a gray-line thorizon o be traversed in ships
the size of overturned skyscrapers. Consider the signature on the
shipping manifest when the ship reached port, a signature unlike
any other on earth, the coffee cup in the hand of the driver
delivering boxes to the distribution center, the secret hopes of the
UPS man carrying boxes of snow globes from there to the Severn
City Airport.” (231)
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Expanding the discussion
When it comes to a world where everything that you used to know is gone, it is fairly
easy to imagine that the concept of remembering is very present. Mandel uses the word
remember 186 times throughout the book, but surprisingly, a lot of them are in scenes
before the collapse, which emphasizes a human tendency to feel nostalgic towards
things that are no longer available. Arthur often remembers and misses the days where
he wasn't extremely famous and was part of projects he actually believed in. Kirsten
remembers a lot more from after the collapse than before, since it happened when she
was only 8 years old and, still, she clings much more to those brief memories than the
ones from when she was older.
Clark is a perfect example of one of the ways that legacy propagates itself in real life:
History. He keeps the legacy of the old world alive through the museum of civilization,
which is a lot similar to museums we have in real life, that keep the legacy of eras that
are no longer available to us. There are many things in current society that go by
unnoticed by us, but that in the future might be very important for our society’s legacy,
which is why cultural and natural preservation is very important.
Huizinga (1968) defines History as the interpretation of the significance that the past
has for us, based on the evidence that survived. History is a very important area of
knowledge, as it has implications in the present and future and gives us perspective and
context to how society was formed and how we got to the point that we are today. And
the fact that the legacy of these events is only alive because the evidence of them
existing was somewhat preserved, and the cultural and natural heritage left by our
ancestors was crucial not only for the historical theory, but also guaranteed that the
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traditions and values they held in the past is part of their legacy and will continue to be
remembered for many generations to come. Clark attempts to preserve our cultural
heritage in the story by collecting and preserving evidence from before the collapse.
However, in real life, the human greed for more money and power is getting in the way
of preserving these legacies, not only destroying the natural and cultural heritage left
from our ancestors, but also ruining the ones that still remain present in our current
society. This problem is recognized, and in an attempt to solve it, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), created the World
Heritage Convention, adopted in 19724. The Convention considers, among other things,
that the natural and cultural heritage is being increasingly threatened with destruction
not only by the traditional causes of decay, but also by changing social and economic
conditions, and that in view of the magnitude and gravity of the new dangers threatening
them, it is incumbent on the international community as a whole to participate in the
protection of the cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value, by the
granting of collective assistance which, although not taking the place of action by the
State concerned, will serve as an efficient complement thereto. The convention forbids
the destruction or damaging of any monument, document, species, sites or natural
features that are considered heritage.
In Station Eleven, Clark recognizes the importance of preserving the past, so he
welcomes visitors that want to remember what it was like before the collapse and to
teach the old world’s legacy to kids who were born after it had already ended. When
thinking about the reason why Clark built the Museum of Civilization, I remembered a
discussion that happened in the book, where Jeevan and his friend are arguing about
4
UNESCO World Heritage Convention https://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext
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whether it is a good idea to keep the old world’s legacy alive, and if it was ethical or
wise to teach that legacy to kids who weren’t alive to experience it.
““I don’t know,” their friend was saying now. “Does it still make
sense to teach kids about the way things were?” (...) his
eleven-year-old daughter had come home crying that afternoon,
because the teacher had let slip that life expectancies were much
longer before the Georgia Flu, that once sixty hadn’t been
considered particularly old, and she was scared, she didn’t
understand, it wasn’t fair, she wanted to live as long as people used
to. “I’m honestly not sure,” Daria said. “I think I’d want my kid to
know. All that knowledge, those incredible things we had.” “To what
end, though?” (...) “You see the way their eyes glaze over when
anyone talks to them about antibiotics or engines. It’s science
fiction to them, isn’t it? And if it only upsets them—” He broke off to
drink wine. “Maybe you’re right,” Daria said. “I suppose the question
is, does knowing these things make them more or less happy?” “In
my daughter’s case, less.”” (page)
This discussion brings out one of the key roles of legacy in the book, because it shows
clearly how the people that survived the collapse see society: as something
impermanent, and that is new to the reader, since in real life we rely on the permanence
of society and technology to keep our legacies alive. However, Station Eleven makes
you question what is permanent and what isn’t, along with the dilemma of what is worth
preserving.
According to Jeevan’s friends, it isn’t worth it to keep remembering the past, because
since it’s no longer available and it was arguably better then, it will only cause pain to
keep bringing it up. He also says that the old society wasn’t permanent like everyone
thought, and it’s now gone. However, Jeevan seems to disagree with his friend, and
there is a very good reason for him doing so.
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The thing is: nothing is completely permanent. According to scientists5, in a few billion
years Earth will be consumed by the Sun, and in a few more tens of billions of years our
whole galaxy will turn into a black hole and eventually the whole universe will cease to
exist. With that said, let’s assume that what is permanent is what continues to be a
constant presence until humanity ceases to exist. After all, if humans are extinct, there
is really no point in analyzing what stays because we won’t be here to see it.
Clearly, electricity and technology aren’t permanent, since the post-collapse world in
Station Eleven doesn’t have any of them, so maybe there is justification for wanting to
forget about it. However, the knowledge acquired through technology, for example, will
not fade as long as it is passed to the next generations, regardless of a pandemic or an
apocalypse. Therefore, the unwillingness to keep the old world’s legacy alive is not only
destroying cultural heritage, but can also be considered unwise, as the progress made
by humanity before the collapse is still useful, especially if trying to go back to what
society was before is a goal.
However, and that is really important, the fact that knowledge can be considered
permanent through legacy doesn’t mean that it can’t be altered or manipulated. In
Station Eleven, the villain of the story, known as The Prophet, makes his own religion,
where he brainwashes the members of his cult, saying that the collapse happened
because the gods wanted to filter people and make humanity start over, and he made
everyone in his community believe that the collapse was actually a good thing, he
manipulated the legacy of the old world and that impacted deeply his community.
5
K.-P. Schröder, Robert Connon Smith, Distant future of the Sun and Earth revisited, Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 386, Issue 1, 1 May 2008, Pages 155–163,
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13022.x
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In real life, we experience this on a much larger scale, since those who have the power
to manipulate legacy aren't a crazy prophet, but incredibly powerful and important
people, and with the ever growing presence of technology, it becomes a lot easier to do
so. Through things like social media, history classes and news articles, it has been
proven that legacy can be manipulated. One could question why manipulate legacy
when it has already been established that it is important to preserve the past, but that
could easily be answered by the fact that humans value power over anything. A study
made by UBC Sauder School of Business made a research where they devised a series
of psychological games in order to deduce the importance of power over other aspects
such as social benefit to different people, and the results showed that more than 30% of
participants had pure power preferences6.
A concrete example of that is the famous and incredibly violent World War I and II. They
were huge historical events that are taught in almost all schools and their legacy will
certainly live for a long time. When a historical event is this big, its legacy is highly
influential in society, and therefore it is more likely to be manipulated in favor of who is
more powerful. Each country manipulated their History classes and taught their
country’s legacy in a way that would be beneficial to them.
Nowadays, whenever anyone needs information about anything, they use the internet to
find it because you can find everything there. However, since technology has influence
over the whole world, it is much easier to manipulate information and spread it in a
global manner. And given that huge corporations with unimaginable power and money
6
UBC Sauder School of Business study about the human desire for power
https://www.sauder.ubc.ca/news/insights/power-game-people-want-power-over-others-even-if-theres-noth
ing-gain
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control the media and the internet, they also control how the world sees certain things,
and that includes the legacy of basically everything.
Station Eleven also perfectly depicts another flaw with having legacy and information
stored on the internet. As an IB student, I spend most of my time researching on my
laptop, and I, like many other people, take for granted all this technology. However, if
the internet suddenly ended tomorrow, all of my work would be completely gone. This
could make one question the impermanence of the digital realm7, and how a lot of
people’s and movement’s legacies are dependent on the internet. After the collapse in
Station Eleven, after the internet was completely gone, the people who died and relied
on the internet as their legacy will have no way to be remembered. As mentioned
before, Arthur would be remembered by millions of people, but since most of his work
relied on the internet, his legacy lived only through one magazine collected by Kirsten.
This highlights a need for us to not rely on the digital realm with our legacy, because
there is no way to know what could happen to it.
7
https://www.lundagard.se/2021/11/17/the-impermanence-of-the-digital-realm/
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Conclusion
In this body of work I tried to come to a plausible answer to the question “To what extent
is Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven a depiction of modern society's issues with legacy
and permanence?”. I chose this topic firstly because I was really interested in reading
more books in the last couple of years, and the book Station Eleven was a
recommendation from my English teacher. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and it made
me reflect on something that had always been on my mind and influenced my decisions:
legacy. Ever since I was a little kid my dad used to tell me the importance of leaving
something you are proud of to the world after you die. History classes have always been
my favorite. The thing I like to do the most is to travel around the world and learn about
each place’s legacy.
Naturally, I felt a special connection to Station Eleven, since it displays legacy as a
literary theme. After understanding the ways legacy is shown in the story, I was
instigated to see how it depicted the properties and aspects of legacy in real life. I
found, through this work, that legacy is very manipulatable with power, especially with
technology, and the repercussions of manipulating it on society.
It is important to understand the ways legacy propagates itself in society, because it will
help you not only build a legacy for yourself in the best way possible, but also become
aware that you shouldn’t blindly believe the legacy of somebody or someone, because it
could have been manipulated. All those characteristics mentioned arose to my attention
by reading Station Eleven, and I am now aware of how important legacy was in my life,
and the key role it plays in society.
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Bibliography
●
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Legacy definition & meaning. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved
March 15, 2022, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legacy
●
Plato's theory of language - JSTOR. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2022, from
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25000576
●
What is a theme in literature? || Oregon State Guide to Literary terms. College of Liberal
Arts. (2021, December 29). Retrieved March 15, 2022, from
https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-theme
●
Centre, U.N.E.S.C.O. (n.d.). Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural
and natural heritage. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Retrieved March 15, 2022, from
https://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext/
●
K.-P. Schröder, Robert Connon Smith, Distant future of the Sun and Earth revisited,
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 386, Issue 1, 1 May 2008,
Pages 155–163, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13022.x
●
Gomola, O., & About the author Ondrej Gomola. (2021, November 17). Ondrej Gomola.
Lundagard.se. Retrieved March 15, 2022, from
https://www.lundagard.se/2021/11/17/the-impermanence-of-the-digital-realm/
●
The Power Game: People Want Power over others, even if there's nothing to gain. The
Power Game: People Want Power Over Others, Even If There's Nothing to Gain | UBC
Sauder School of Business. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2022, from
https://www.sauder.ubc.ca/news/insights/power-game-people-want-power-over-others-e
ven-if-theres-nothing-gain
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