Part of what pandemic fiction illuminates is how fears of invasion and the perceived threat of outsiders can diminish our humanity.
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The pandemic in Mandel’s novel dramatically emphasizes to the characters not how to respond to a virus but, instead, how powerfully interconnected they truly are - the same thing COVID-19 is doing to us right now. Characters stranded in an airport hangar, for example, must work together to build a new society that accommodates their shared traumatic experience. Those fears in Station Eleven coalesce in scenes where communities must shift how they understand their relationship to one another. The medical details of the disease are less important than the rhetorical impact of the destructive virus. The vast majority of the novel takes place before and after the outbreak. In fact, Station Eleven spends almost no time focused on the actual epidemic.
Mandel herself has called Station Eleven more “ a love letter to the world we find ourselves in” than a handbook for a post-apocalyptic future Indeed, Mandel herself publicly suggested that her novel is not ideal reading material for the present moment. Station Eleven draws from apocalyptic literature, a narrative form that tells us more about the present than the future. Some news outlets even call the novel a “ model for how we could respond” to an apocalyptic pandemic. This response treats Mandel’s novel as through it predicts what will happen as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. The current pandemic sharpens fears about the relative instability of our communities (along with posing an immediate threat to our health, of course).Ĭoverage of Station Eleven claims that the text is uniquely relevant to the COVID-19 situation. Mandel’s novel serves as a test case for understanding the cultural response to COVID-19. Mandel’s novel follows a troupe of Shakespearean actors touring a post-apocalyptic landscape in a North America decimated by contagious disease. One novel that has grown in popularity over the past few weeks is been Emily St. ‘Station 11’ is set in Toronto, Ont., and looks at what happens to human relationships as a pandemic threatens civilization.