Arthur as a Possible Link: Narrative Streams in 'Station Eleven' Forest Lin 12th Grade

While Emily St John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven portrays Arthur Leander as the seemingly fundamental figure due to his thorough association and cogent influence with the majority of other characters, Mandel herself preferentially catechizes humanity’s inert instincts of survival and greed against the learnt values of compassion and empathy, utilizing the contrasted timelines of multiple narrative streams to exemplify the principles of modern society against a post-apocalyptic landscape. The non-linear structure of the text allows the reader to juxtapose the superficiality of our current contemporary lifestyle against the genuine relationships almost involuntarily established by humanity’s connection to empathy in the face of crisis. The apparent vast affiliation Arthur shares with a broad variety of characters, incidentally causing their future interactions in the novel, symbolically reflects Mandel’s exposal of the ease in which society is linked, revealing humanity’s fragility and dependency on one another that is accentuated in eye of catastrophe. Mandel’s employment of separate narrative streams in a non-linear fashion allows the audience to contrast humanity’s attitude as a whole, in which Arthur only casts light on,...