Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven tells the story of the Traveling Symphony surviving after a pandemic nearly eliminated all human life on the planet. Mandel emphasizes the survival is insufficient and challenges the ideas of what is necessary to survival. Mandel would argue to live and survive are two different concepts, the former much easier to do with privilege and the latter a delicate balance of precarity. After reading the book and understanding some of Mandel's main themes, I can name 5 things that are necessary to live beyond the means of survival. 1. Art"What the Symphony was doing, what they were always doing, was trying to cast a spell, and costuming helped; the lives they brushed up against were work-worn and difficult, people who spent all their time engaged in the tasks of survival" (Mandel 151). Despite all that collapses in Station Eleven, Shakespeare continues to prosper centuries later with the Traveling Symphony's reliance on communicating through art. They never waver from performing Shakespeare, and it continues to please crowds. In another light, the museum exhibit that Clarke creates is also similar to displaying ordinary objects as art, portraying them as relics of the past in order to pay tribute to a world lost to a pandemic. The creative capacity of our minds is what makes us human, and this is why I believe the Traveling Symphony continues to pursue the arts, to continue creative collaboration that all humans have contributed towards. 2. Community"Some places, you pass through once and never return, because you can tell something's very wrong. Everyone's afraid, or it seems like some people have enough to eat and other people are starving, or you see a pregnant eleven-year-olds and you know the place is either lawless or in the grip of something, a cult of some time" (Mandel 114). Community is an essential tool for survival, but also for thriving with others. In the Prophet's following, his power is dangerously elevated and reveals how community can lack with an all-powerful, patriarchal leader. The Traveling Symphony as a community isn't stagnant and moves from town to town, celebrating and performing music for all to hear. Between performances they would have to collaborate to survive with basic necessities, but they were able to thrive without needing to possess weapons or even stay in one location. They also thrive because they are driven by art, and not by power-hungry motives as seen in the Prophet's community. 3. Faith"The light we carry within us is the ark that Noah and his people over the face of the terrible waters, and I submit that we were saved...not only to to bring the light, to spread the light, but to be the light. We were saved because we are the light. We are the pure" (Mandel 60). Faith plays an interesting role in the Prophet's life and his indoctrination towards his community of followers. We later discover he is Tyler, Arthur's son, who takes on some of his parent's attributes, including his mother's belief that everything happens for a reason and his father's womanizing tendencies. The Prophet weaponizes faith as a tool of power, which shows how dangerous faith as a community following can be. Faith doesn't necessarily have to fall into a religious category, though, because I would argue that the Traveling Symphony uses art in the same way as religious followers use faith to survive. 4. Education"Other towns, discussion of the past is discouraged. We went to a place once where the children didn't know the world had ever been different, although you'd think all the rusted-out automobiles and telephones would give them a clue" (Mandel 115). Education and learning is necessary to advancing society, especially in a pandemic like the one we're experiencing. While basic necessities are important, public education actually creates more opportunities for students to access food and internet resources at little to no cost. Although, in the case of Station Eleven, Clarke takes pride in the collection of artifacts he's collected from the past and is thoughtful to educate children, especially about airplanes, given the fact that most of the children born after the pandemic grew up in an airport. This place frames the context of education importance, but in the communities that Raymonde mentions in the quotation above indicate that education is not a priority, or education may be a privilege that comes after basic needs for survival. 5. Remembering"First we only want to be seen, but once we're seen, that's not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered" (Mandel 187). Remembering is crucial to several characters. The Traveling Symphony as a whole remembers the art of Shakespeare, paying tribute to the playwright with every performance. Clark establishes a museum in the airport dedicated to trivial items like iPhones and signatures. Both of these ideas may seem unnecessary to survival after a pandemic, but these are important to creative energies that fuel the mental capacity to survive. There's also importance to recognize in collective memory, since a large population of the post-pandemic world used to know what the "normal" world looked and felt like, so it's their job to pass on those memories through storytelling to preserve the past in any way they can.
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I’ve studied Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” in high school and two college literature courses, and ever time I re-read the story, I discover something new, or I find themes of this short story in other works. We never learn the narrator’s name, which proves how dehumanizing the character feels because of her identity as a woman with mental health issues. Her husband and physician, John, orders bed rest to cure her sickness, which is really postpartum depression. She is separated from her baby and goes mad staying inside one room with a ghastly yellow wall paper. Without any creative freedom, the only thing her imagination can explore is the yellow wallpaper. She eventually loses her mind as a result of the rest cure developed by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and the story’s ambiguous ending leaves the reader to believe whether the narrator is truly free or forever trapped within the wallpaper.
Flash forward more than 100 years since “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published in 1892, and Louise Erdrich addresses the same oppression that women face. What’s unique about Erdrich’s tale rests in her identity as a Native American woman. Her main character, Cedar, is also an adopted Native American woman whose story is told through the journey of discovering who her parents are and understanding who she is based on her roots. Understanding women’s oppression through a Native American lens further deepens the roots of intersectionality that impact women through racial and ethnic identities. In both stories we see women separated from their children to benefit patriarchy. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” has no choice in the matter, and I would argue that the separation from her child causes her more distress than staying away from it. While John doesn’t diagnose her with postpartum depression, bed rest isn’t the “cure” she needs. Her desire to write and imagine were fueled by creative passions from within that were begging to escape beyond her physical desire to spend time in the gardens outside her barred windows. In Future Home of the Living God, Cedar is most likely separated from her baby at the end of the story. I find great happiness in her desire to live through hope, predominantly focused on creating a better world for her child, no matter the outcome of the de-evolutionary madness going on in the world. But I predict that Cedar does not live long after the novel’s ending, or continues to serve the government as a baby-making machine, further subjugating her identity to reproductive means. Both stories also subjugate women to mental institutions. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is taken to a summer home, but the reader can gather that she’s staying in a children’s mental asylum. Two problems here: 1. The narrator is a grown, adult woman, staying in a children’s facility. John treats his wife as a child, who must obey strict orders and not wonder beyond the confines of her room. It almost feels like the narrator is on permanent time-out, but what did she do wrong? And 2: A mental asylum is not the ideal place for a woman to be cured of postpartum depression. She is confined to one room, and cannot get any fresh air. She’s not allowed to read or write, and she maintains little to no communication with the outside world, even with John’s visitors. No wonder she goes crazy. In Future Home of the Living God, the government abducts all pregnant women, and even encourages citizens to turn in pregnant women who are hiding their pregnancies. Cedar is eventually taken to a “hospital,” which she recognizes immediately as the Minnesota Correctional Facility underneath the “Stillwater Birthing Center” sign. So for both women, why is the medical industry still pursuing these methods for harboring women they feel who are dangerous to society? It goes to show, despite Future Home of the Living God’s fictional genre, how little progress has been made in terms of women’s reproductive health and rights. For an indigenous woman like Cedar, these complications are heightened by her identity, where the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” may have access to privileges that protect her from government elements that plague Cedar’s narrative. No matter the identity, women in both stories share a collective narrative of oppression as a result of patriarchal influences in medicine and government, and both show how much work we still have to ensure that women have the choice to affordable and reliable health care options that suit all lifestyles, including Native Americans. |
AuthorCreative writer + professional & technical writer. TWD enthusiast. Archives
April 2021
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