Rhetorical Relationships in Station Eleven

First off, I want to say that Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is something I would have never gravitated towards. It is not the typical genre that I usually read. As I began to read into the text, I noticed that I instantly was captured in the mimetic (relating to) aspect. I became a submissive reader and found myself wanting to go through the motions of the characters. I wanted to feel the emotions of what each character was feeling before and after the collapse of civilization. It is something that can be suspenseful in today’s society as we deal with epidemics and other environmental factors.

As I continued to read into the text, I tried to look more into the themes at play. I noticed that each of the characters are linked together. This kept my interest as Alexis stated in her previous blog for much of the same reasons. I found myself wanting to figure out the mystery of how they were related to each other in the text.

The way Emily St. John Mandel wrote the novel was interesting as it jumped from different time periods to show what the world was like prior to the outbreak and twenty years after the fall. I found that this added to the writing and my reading for because it provided further interest. I wanted to learn more about how the characters dealt with themselves and their relationships from the before and after aspect. For instance, Kirsten is one of the main characters and we meet her in the beginning (before the outbreak of the Georgia flu) when she is a little girl. She is seen as being scared and timid. Then we see her again twenty years later and she is much more independent and can hold her own in questioning circumstances. She is not afraid to talk to strangers and she carries knives with her for protection. For instance in the text it states,

“Even in this calmer era, who would admit to being outnumbered? His gaze rested on Kirsten’s knives. She was finding it difficult not to stare at the scar on the side of his face” (146).

This is when Kirsten and August, both members of the Traveling Symphony, are lost and stumble upon a man named Finn.

As I stated earlier, I found myself submitting to the text, playing the role the narrator intended for the reader. I was going through the emotions with the characters and trying to solve the mystery of how each character was linked together.