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Personification
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
Station Eleven mostly takes place in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and Canada both before and after the fictional Georgia Flu pandemic. Key locations in the novel's present include the fictional Severn City Airport (which becomes the home of the “Museum of Civilization”) and the various stops of the Traveling Symphony as they make their yearly circuit. Many of the scenes in the novel's flashbacks also take place in Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles, which are all destroyed by the pandemic. There are also frequent mentions of the fictional Delano Island, a remote community off the coast of British Columbia where the actor Arthur Leander grew up.
The novel repeatedly juxtaposes the pre- and post-apocalyptic worlds. This shows the reader many different aspects of the complete transformation brought by the Georgia Flu. Flashbacks to the bustle of major cities like Toronto are held up against the silence and devastation of the post-flu world. Notably, the border between the US and Canada has ceased to exist after the flu devastated the North American continent’s population. National identities, it seems, cease to matter when nations themselves no longer exist. By contrast, Arthur Leander feels an irresistible connection to his own Canadian and Delano Island identities during the flashbacks to his life. While civilization persists, it feeds Arthur’s own sense of displacement and small-town insecurity.
Station Eleven’s setting also reflects the novel’s focus on cultural loss and the argument the book makes that “survival is insufficient.” Mandel makes the case throughout the book that in order to live, humans need to preserve both art and technology. The survivors who hide in the Severn City Airport create a “Museum of Civilization,” which they fill with relics from the old world in order to commemorate it. This large room in the former airport becomes a sinkhole of memory and continuity, as it allows people from many different walks of life to preserve what matters to them and explain it to others. The Traveling Symphony’s performances also represent the struggle to maintain beauty and meaning even in the rubble of the world. Mandel’s narrator tells the reader that the Symphony quickly started performing only classical music and Shakespeare’s plays when they realized that these forms of high art were their most popular offerings. Instead of rejecting entertainment that doesn’t reflect their current experiences, their audience craves the cultural and literary canon of the former world (it's also worth noting that these older art forms perhaps better align with the low-tech circumstances in which the characters find themselves after the pandemic).
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