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Alliteration
Definition of Allusion
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition
Allusions
Explanation and Analysis—King Lear:
Throughout Station Eleven, Mandel makes allusions to William Shakespeare’s tragic play King Lear. This motif, when it appears, reinforces the novel’s exploration of the effects of hindsight and the ways power changes people.
In the original play, the aging King Lear divides his kingdom among his daughters. He’s deceived by the false flattery of his oldest children Regan and Goneril, and he banishes his innocent youngest daughter, Cordelia, because he sees her refusal to exaggerate her love for him as disloyal. This unpopular decision leads to betrayal and political chaos. It’s also the direct cause of Lear’s descent into madness, as he realizes too late that Cordelia was the only person who truly loved him.
By the play’s end, nearly every major character has died, and the few who remain have to rebuild their world from the ground up. One of the most explicit connections between the book and the play is Arthur’s role as King Lear, which he is acting in on the night of his death. This is where the novel begins, and the narrative regularly revisits in flashbacks. Arthur’s sudden collapse onstage foreshadows the larger collapse of civilization that follows the Georgia Flu outbreak. The chaotic transition from performance to reality in the flashbacks to that night—the audience is unsure if Arthur is still acting until the paramedics arrive—also reflects the thin boundary between order and chaos. The collapse of civilization also echoes the chaos that Lear’s actions cause, which eventually drives him to madness.
In King Lear and in Station Eleven, after things collapse the world becomes unpredictable and dangerous. Just as Lear descends toward insanity after his daughters’ betrayals, the world of Station Eleven falls into disorder after the pandemic erupts. Also like Lear, characters in Station Eleven are forced to think about the impact of their actions and to agonize over what they might have done differently. Just as Lear only understands his mistakes when it is too late to fix them, characters like Kirsten (in the present) and Arthur (in the past) try to piece together the meaning of past events.
The shifting dynamics of leadership in Station Eleven similarly parallel the struggles for control in Lear. Some leaders, like the Prophet, take advantage of people’s fear and confusion to manipulate them into following their ideologies. The Prophet wields his power through fear and violence, convincing people they have a moral imperative to follow him. The Traveling Symphony, by contrast, operates on loyalty and the shared purpose of bringing beauty to the world. The Prophet’s version of authority only works as long as he is able to inspire fear and obedience, while the Symphony’s power is able to persist despite all the danger and challenges they face.
Related Themes:
Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Spanish Flu:
As he preaches to the former audience of the Symphony’s Shakespeare production, the Prophet makes an allusion to the 1918 flu pandemic. In doing so, he is drawing a historical parallel between it and the fictional Georgia Flu, for the “benefit” of his rapt audience:
“Consider,” he said, “those of you who remember the world before the Georgia Flu, consider the iterations of the illness that preceded it, those trifling outbreaks against which we were immunized as children, the flus of the past. There was the outbreak of 1918, my people, the timing obvious, divine punishment for the waste and slaughter of the First World War.”
The 1918 flu pandemic, also known as the Spanish flu, was a global outbreak of influenza that infected an estimated one-third of the world’s population and killed at least 50 million people. It began during the final months of World War I and spread rapidly due to the global movements of soldiers and the world’s then-minimal public health infrastructure. The flu had an unusually high mortality rate among young, healthy adults, which meant that it also had serious aftereffects on population growth. The world was utterly unprepared for a pandemic of this scale, which overwhelmed hospitals and all attempts to curb it before eventually subsiding in 1920.
The Prophet's reference to this pandemic directly compares the Georgia Flu to one of the deadliest pandemics in history. By invoking this past event, which pales in comparison to the disaster of the Georgia Flu, he suggests to his audience that these outbreaks are an escalating series of punishments from the Christian god. This comparison casts the Georgia Flu as more than a random disaster. Like the 1918 flu—which he claims was a “divine punishment for the [...] First World War”—the Prophet believes the Georgia Flu was sent to punish humanity.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Noah's Ark:
In St. Deborah by the Water, The Prophet explains to the Symphony’s former audience that the Georgia Flu was sent as a religious judgment on those who died. Mandel uses allusion and metaphor to frame the Prophet’s ideology and to connect the Georgia Flu to the biblical story of the flood:
"The flu," the prophet said, "the great cleansing that we suffered twenty years ago, that flu was our flood. The light we carry within us is the ark that carried Noah and his people over the face of the terrible waters, and I submit that we were saved"—his voice was rising—"not only 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."
By making this allusion to the Flood, the Prophet is explaining his belief that the flu was not a random catastrophe but a divine event meant to purge the world. By comparing the pandemic to the flood that wiped out humanity in the biblical Book of Genesis, he casts it for his audience as a form of judgment from God. He implies that those who perished were sinful and unworthy and those who survived were chosen for a higher purpose. His use of “cleansing” here suggests that the old world was corrupt, just as the Christian god judged the people of Noah’s world to be too sinful to be allowed to continue living.
The Prophet uses the metaphor of “light” here to suggest that the survivors are better people than those who died. He claims that the survivors are not just meant to continue life but to “be the light,” and to embody righteousness. He equates them to Noah’s family, who were spared by the Christian god to rebuild a better world after the old one was destroyed. The phrase “be the light” implies that those who follow the Prophet have to see themselves as morally superior to everyone that came before. This framing allows him to justify both his own control over his followers and the violent things he tells them to do in service of his cause. Because they are “the pure,” in this version of reality, anything they do is permissible as part of “being the light.”
Related Themes:
