Station Eleven: Metaphors 6 key examples

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.”

The conductor’s statement, “We have traveled so far together,” is a metaphor for more than just physical distance. It’s true that the Traveling Symphony have covered a vast geographical distance as a group. However, it’s not the physical journey the conductor is referring to, but their journey of growth and survival. Their journey is not just about their collective movement across the land, but about the bonds they have formed and the hardships they have endured with each other’s help. The phrase suggests that their shared history and love for one another matters as much as the miles they have covered.

The narrator then interjects with another metaphor, saying that light can “blur the years.” This metaphor links the ability to see and perceive with the passing of time. Kirsten and her companions all need light to see, but “certain qualities” of light can make scenes in the present “blur” into scenes from the past. Like the novel’s many flashbacks, the way that the sunrise illuminates August for Kirsten suggests that time is not fixed. The persistence of memory makes it difficult to distinguish between what is gone and should be mourned and what remains and should be cherished.

The metaphor of “light and darkness” that the Prophet uses to explain his philosophy to his followers is a simplistic, moralistic view of the world. In his ideology, one side—the “light,” or the people that follow him— represents goodness, and the other can only be absolute evil. This division is plausibly appealing to desperate people seeking a sense of moral clarity, as many characters are after the pandemic. However, in the context of survival, this idea becomes dangerous. It divides the world into good and bad people and implies that anything that the “good” people do is necessarily also morally good. As she mulls over this idea, Kirsten is considering how this statement pushes the idea of what is permissible in their dangerous world to the extreme. She explains to August that she thinks the Prophet’s words might allow people to justify any action or choice in the service of survival, no matter how ruthless.

The hyperbolic phrasing of “there’s nothing that you cannot justify” and “nothing that you will not do” exaggerates the logical endpoint of this “light and dark” mindset. If survival depends on believing oneself to be “the light,” then any action—no matter how violent or unethical—is permissible as long as it extends that survival. Rather than reinforcing moral and ethical boundaries, this kind of moral absolutism actually erases them.

In this poem, August is reassuring Kirsten that no matter how lost she gets, he will always find her. The metaphor that this poem has at its center—the “starship suspended in night”—expresses his devotion to Kirsten. He’s saying that his love for and loyalty to her exceed all physical limits. The image of a huge, silent spacecraft floating in an infinite expanse also evokes the idea of navigating the unknown and braving whatever comes to stay with her.

When August says that he would “follow and find” Kirsten if her “soul left this earth,” he’s telling her that even death, if it came, would not separate them. In a world where loss is constant and death is always close, he wants Kirsten to know he will always be with her. The silent, unchangeable finality of this is also supported by the poem’s use of alliteration. The final phrase, “Silent, my starship suspended in night,” employs a kind of alliteration called sibilance, the repetition of multiple /s/ sounds. Sibilance creates a hushed, almost reverent tone, and the softness of “silent,” “starship,” and “suspended” mimics the stillness of deep space or death. It makes the poem feel intimate and solemn, as though August is taking a vow.

Dahlia’s description of the corporate world as “full of ghosts” is a metaphor for the lack of meaning she sees in professional life. She sees the people around her with steady jobs and routines as moving through daily life without purpose, like ghosts doomed to re-walk the same paths. Even her academic parents—a job that is usually done by people passionate about their subjects—are just players in the “horror show” of life in late-stage capitalism. She feels like adulthood is not a realm of success but of unmet expectations. Comparing these aspects of life to a “horror show” also shows the exhaustion she feels. She had “front row seats” to the spectacle of her parents becoming stuck in their routine and the feeling of claustrophobia it brought. Like ghosts who cannot find peace after death, Dahlia worries that adults always have unfinished business and unmet needs that they cannot let go of. 

The metaphor of Jeevan’s “soul and the world unwinding” links the bodily sensations he’s experiencing to the broader collapse of civilization. Inside his apartment he was protected from the outside world, but now he’s forced to experience it “unwinding” in real time. His sense of self is dissolving alongside the structured reality he once knew, as if both are unraveling together. It's as though his heart is actually bare and "exposed" to the world, although it's still beating in his chest. The narrator’s voice slips into the first person here as Jeevan describes “my soul” and “my heart.” This blurs the boundary between the internal and external, making the reader feel closer to his growing delirium and disorientation. The loss of order in the world mirrors the loss of clarity in his own thoughts, emphasizing how deeply he feels the collapse.