Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

There are a couple of things I wanted to touch on so I broke it down in parts .

Page 123

In this part of the book we learned that a little girl from St. Deborah , Eleanor ran away and hid in the Symphony caravan because the prophet wanted to marry her.Reading this part of the book disgusted me because how low this prophet stooped , marrying a child? What does she have that she can offer you at such a young age? Whoever came up with the saying ‘History repeats itself’ was absolutely correct. The remaining people threw out their morals and took up the old ways of arranging marriages and what makes it worse is that she’s only twelve years old. Eleanor stated, “He had a dream where God told him he was to repopulate the earth”, which was the prophet reason for having many wives and to get married to Eleanor. Out of all the women in the city God told you to marry a twelve year old? I find that sickening , the fact that he thought his reason was acceptable. This reminds me of an article I read yesterday about the Supreme Court in India no longer permitted men to have non-consensual marital sex with girls as young as 15, as the Supreme Court made their decision, the government of India disagreed with their actions because “its part of their tradition.” Regardless of what happens on earth, morals shouldn’t change, if marrying a twelve year old is wrong before the collapse it should stay that way after the apocalypse. Some morals shouldn’t change, regardless of how much the population decreased.

Page 133

In the beginning paragraphs of chapter 22, it starts off with Kirsten analyzing how different Alexandra is at the age of fifteen from when Kirsten was fifteen. The narrator states, “Alexandra knew how to shoot, but the world was softening. There was a fair chance…that Alexandra would live out her life without killing anyone. She was a younger fifteen-year-old than Kirsten had ever been.” The world was softening. Could that mean that the world has become more soft, less chaos since the beginning of the outbreak? So because the world was becoming ‘soft’ Alexandra won’t have to worry about killing anyone because everything is slowly dying down and might go back to normal? From this quote it’s obvious that after the flu broke out Kirsten had to do whatever to survive, which mans that she most likely had to kill people at the age of fifteen to defend herself, and she was so young. Now since times are not that bad anymore, Alexandra, now fifteen years old won’t have to do that. The narrator stated that Alexandra was a younger fifteen year old than Kirsten, meaning that Kirsten had to mature at fifteen, she was either on her own or traveling with her brother but she had to survive in a way fifteen year old before the outbreak shouldn’t have too, maybe Alexandra reminds Kirsten on how ‘regular’ fifteen year old would act before the apocalypse

Page 178

In the first paragraph on page 178 Jeevan is looking out the window reminiscing and it stood out to me, “..when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points or origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines.” I think as Jeevan is thinking about this he realizing how much you take for advantage when you’re living life before something serious happens, and he’s right. As humans we do take things for granted but it’s not purposely, we get caught up with the latest phone release or the next vacation and don’t realize that the life we live could change in a blink of an eye. It’s hard to grasp that for however long you have been living things that don’t seem important because we’re use to it like walking into a grocery tore to pick up something you forgot for dinner or going to the doctor because you feel ill could change one day where life isn’t that easy. This made me realize how much i take for granted and how much I need to appreciate life .

Page 181

Chapter 31 is a dialogue between a librarian and Kirsten during year fifteen of the outbreak. As Kirsten is getting interviewed on the very first night when the flu spread throughout the city and where she was and what was happening at that time.She tells a summary of the night Arthur died and brings up Jeevan, but she doesn’t remember his name and the interviewer replies “I’m not sure anyone does”. That sucks, to know that Jeevan was the first responded to Arthur collapsing and even tried to sooth Kirsten and take he away from the chaos and one knows his name. He’s getting no credit for his work and that night when he took charge of the situation he was so happy, he felt like he found his calling as a EMT and not one person knows his name.

Page 187

Jeevan and his brother Frank are locked away in Franks apartment and he reads out loud to Jeevan the book he was working on and ass he read it all of it made sense. The  philanthropist Frank was writing about touched on something I found important to even our times, celebrities bringing attention to charities and causes. He stated, “What I like to see is when actors use their celebrity in an interesting way. Some of them have charitable foundations, they do things like try to bring attention to the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan, or they’re trying to save the white African rhino..” This is true, celebrities do use their fame to expose people to charities and causes and as they’re doing that it allows their fame to rise and gives them a good name, for example, after the flood in Texas, Beyoncé went to her hometown and helped the people in need, Chance the Rapper donated one million dollars to public schools in Chicago to fund their art program. Deeds like these expose other people and even other companies to help and pitch in. These actions causes them to be remembered. Frank also writes, “First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.” Which I find true, people don’t become celebrities to help bring more notice to charities, they usually become famous because they want their talents to been seen, and remembered. When celebrities do outstanding things for the people who needs help it changes how we see them, not only is Chance the Rapper a well song writer, he cares about the people of his city enough to donate his own money to help keep art programs running , that totally changes how people see him, and because of his actions, he will always be remembered, probably not by students in NYC but the kids who met him that day, and all the schools he helped , will definitely will always remember him.  Which goes back to my point about Jeevan, even though Arthur still died and a killer flu broke out right after no credit will be given to him because no one knows who helped to save Arthur but the cardiologist, who probably isn’t alive and Jeevan didn’t even jump to action to be seen, or to be considered a hero, but because he felt that it was right. He gets no recognition.

I also have a question about Kirsten tattoos for anyone who read ahead, does she explain what the tattoo of the two knives mean ? and if she doesn’t does anyone know what they mean ? Does it stand for something ?