Art provides meaning and hope as civilization disintegrates Forest Lin 12th Grade

While Emily St John Mandel presents survival as an inert desire for humanity in the event of cataclysmic crisis, her elegiac novel Station Eleven ultimately exposes the lack of fulfillment or agency many individuals may experience in the absence of technological staples from the prelapsarian world. To fill the void left by technology, electricity and transport, much of humanity turn to art's perpetual ability to provide entertainment to a world rocked by tragedy. Mandel explores the capacity for art to elucidate satisfying memories from an individual's past, catalyzing new ambitions to rebuild society and regain a civilized lifestyle. Mandel also promotes art as capable of connecting dispersed populations after crisis through mutual interests of the same music of forms of literature, generating human connections amongst the community and hence, culture. Despite her promotion of art as a key contributor to humanity's sense of enjoyment and happiness, she simultaneously acknowledges humanity desire for survival as an inert instinct stemming from a fear of death, is vital to continue the human race and civilization as a whole.

Mandel lucidly champions the capacity for art to help trigger pleasant memories of prelapsarian society...