Now we are reading up to the part two and part three of the story, “Station Eleven” which written by Emily St. John Mandel, it was basically telling about the life of a Traveling Symphony in the later twenty years after the break out of the Georgia Flu and part three was about the past story of Arthur Leander before he died on the heart attack. Through all contents from part two and part three, all you feel was the very pity to the past on the Earth and hopeless for the future life, however, life was still goes on and you still had to struggle.
In the beginning of part two, Mandel first introduced to you a new group to the story which was the Traveling Symphony, they were keep moving under a hard condition in the later twenty years after the flu destroyed the whole world. She said, “Tree pressed in close at the sides of the road and erupted through cracks in the pavement, saplings bending under the caravans and soft leaves brushing the legs of horses and Symphony alike. The heat wave had persisted for a relentless week” (Mandel, Page 34.) Mandel used a lot descriptions on the environment to create a vivid image for us to understand the hard condition of the Traveling Symphony, even the condition was hard, this group still kept moving, and comparing to other people, this group seems more like about the works from Shakespeare. Maybe that was the thing which encourage them to keep moving forward.
The sentence which impressed me a lot was the line of text across the bottom of the comic book, “Station Eleven” from Kirsten, it said “I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth” (Mandel, Page 42.) This sentence is telling the main idea throughout part two, it was true that their sweet home on Earth was already damaged, they had no ideas what to do after, they did not know what to do for this hopeless future for them, all they can do was just stick to what they were doing and struggle for living in such a bad environment on Earth. This scene really reminds about the TV show, “The Walking Dead”. What’s the future mean to them so far, and they did not have the exact answer for this yet.
Part 3 began showing the memories of Arthur Leander well before the Georgia Flu at the moment Kirsten was collecting the photos of Arthur to think back about the past life. This part is basically about Arthur’s start of his career and his past relationships, especially the relationship between Miranda and him. And how Arthur became an important part of Miranda’s life. I was not so interested in this part, but I still saw that Arthur did help Miranda a lot without realizing it.
The author put the flashback of the main character such as Arthur, this made the contents of the story getting completed, it greatly help with the development of the plot.
