Linell Review// "Station Eleven"

Eric Linell

9/20/15

Station Eleven Review

       Station Eleven, a novel written by Emily St. John Mandel, addresses the apocalypse  with a focus on the aftermath rather than the deadly Georgia flu that wipes out world civilization.  There are many elements in the novel that illustrate how an apocalypse will impact society’s value system and everyday life.  The book is very thought-provoking as it moves back and forth in time, between locations and among characters.  Mandel quickly absorbs the reader’s attention by creating a mystery within the story leaving subtle clues interweaved throughout the chapters. The mystery of how the different character are connected from pre-apocalypse to post-apocalypse, twenty years later, is slowly revealed to the reader as the story progresses. The story was very engrossing with a good story line but left me disturbed by Mandel’s lack of attention to the suffering created by the end of civilization.  

   There are  many aspects of the book that are intriguing.  Mandel’s ability to redefine a sense of normalcy after the tragedy forces the reader to examine how much we take things for granted in our everyday life.  The way post –apocalypse people interact and survive shows that material possessions and modern technology are less important than humanity and decency.  Mandel seems to be giving the reader a commentary on today’s society.  Have we let our preoccupation with technology and material possessions pre-empted our need and ability to communicate and form relationships? Mandel’s sends us this message through the Traveling Symphony. Their motto of “Survival is not Sufficient” refers less to the lack of modern necessities and more to the need for friendships, relationships and humanity.  The characters in the story are also very engaging. I immediately liked Jeevan.  His desire to be a paramedic, his loyalty to his handicapped brother, his trustworthiness and his dependability at the airport all make the reader root for his survival.  I also felt sympathy for Arthur, the celebrity. Mandel demonstrates the different stages of his life and show how he finally realizes what is important in life. Before his tragic death, he attempts to get rid of his possessions and plans on going to Israel to reunite with his son, Tyler. It is quite sad that he dies before he can accomplish this dream.  I also admired Kirstin’s bravery and her ability to survive in the face of danger. Mandel also uses Arthur’s son to show how a character progresses in the face of the tragedy. He goes from being an innocent boy to the leader of a religious cult capable of murder.  When the true identity of The Prophet is revealed, the pieces of the puzzle are solved in the mystery.  It was fascinating to see the final connection between Arthur, the first character, and Tyler, his son, who turns out to be the Prophet.   I also liked the optimism at the end of the story. It is comforting to think that if the apocalypse occurs in my lifetime, there is a chance that survival is possible and some part of modern civilization will be preserved.  

   There are also many disturbing aspects of the story.  Mandel fails to address the suffering and despair that society would experience if the end of the world occurred.  The small settlements of people that survived seem to have adjusted to a new sense of “ normal”. There are several current shows and movies that address the apocalypse , like The Walking Dead, that demonstrate the fear and suffering. It is also strange that Kirstin is so obsessed with Arthur, a dead celebrity.  Why would a young girl be obsessed with an older man and the comic books?  It may be her way of holding on to past civilization, but I think Mandel put too much emphasis on this aspect of the story. Mandel seems to use Kirstin as a way to connect the characters in the story. I also found Mandel’s use of flashbacks in the telling the story distracting to the flow of the book. Perhaps, it forces the reader to pause and concentrate on the message the author was trying to communicate. I also felt very sad when the Prophet turned out to be Arthur’s son.  It was depressing that his lack of meaning caused him to grasp religion in an unhealthy way. These unsettling aspects of the book caused me to have mixed feelings about the story.  

   The book Station Eleven is quite compelling as the characters demonstrate their ability to survive this tragedy.  Mandel shows what is truly important in life and asks the reader to re-evaluate  their life.  The most unsettling part for me as a reader is the reality that recent world events, like the Eboli virus, show that this scenario  is not so far fetched. There is much anxiety in today’s world that despite all modern technology and medicine, there are still events that could occur to cause the apocalypse.  

Station Eleven: A Marathon

Station Eleven: A Marathon

Reading Emily St. John Mandel’s book Station Eleven  is like running a marathon: it seems a bit slow at the start, almost regrettable in the middle,  and by the end, there’s an anticipation to finish it. The book focuses on the journey of The Travelling Symphony after the world collapses due to the deadly plague  called the Georgia Flu.  Kirsten, one of the main characters of the novel and a member of the symphony, is used as a means of interconnecting the story with multiple characters. This exposes the reader to different perspectives of the new world before, during, and after the apocalypse. The wholesomeness of the book is attributable to these different experiences, but many of them were dull and prolonged. The absence of consistent, interesting conflict at the beginning of Station Eleven  leads to the reader’s lack of engagement and intrigue for the majority of the book.

The stories of the characters Jeevan and Clark are unnecessary and, frankly, irrelevant when it comes to captivating readers to continue to read  Station Eleven. Both characters are essential in providing context,  and their stories serve as a means of transitioning into pivotal events throughout the book. However, the depth in which their stories are described takes away from the reader’s  initial anticipation of reading about action and drama. People would rather read about the violent and unbelievable stories of the post-apocalyptic world than about the lives of a man who hates his job and another who can’t find a suitable one. It is understandable that Mandel pushes for the reader to understand the emotional journeys of certain characters, but she already does so in an effective way in Chapter 6 of the book. The characters of  Station Eleven experience the hardships of surviving in an anarchical society and often reminisce on what once existed before the Georgia Flu. Mandel dedicates a whole chapter to what characters reminisce as they continue to exist in the new world; one part of that chapter goes as follows:

No more countries, all borders unmanned. No more fire departments, no more police. No more road maintenance or garbage pickup... No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room... (p.68)

The structure of the passage is list form, which is expected from the title of the chapter: "An Incomplete List". Though this structure and Mandel’s starting each sentence with the words "no more" make the passage seem somewhat repetitive and tedious, her diction and syntax account for that by capturing the reader with the vivid realities of  life post-apocalypse. Both her vagueness and specificity in describing the losses of the new world dig into the emotional, mental, and societal detriments of the characters of the book. Mandel connects the readers to the characters by finding a common ground: humanity. This is the content that will push a reader to continue a book, and it simultaneously allows the reader to comprehend the context and current state of the new world and its people.  

Overall, although the end of Station Eleven suffices to the standards of spontaneity and action set in this review, it does not compensate for how tedious the beginning was. If a reader is not captivated throughout a book, that book will not be finished. There is no way one will appreciate a book when he/she puts it down in the middle and is reluctant to pick it up -- unless it is to complete a mandatory high school reading requirement. Mandel’s choices for Station Eleven  are apprehendable and respectable, but how she portrays some of these choices is detrimental to the book.  

Words, words word, they're pretty powerful: Station 11 Book review

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Civilization is over; everyone you’ve ever loved has died, and you are alone. Everything pure in the world has been sullied; You are a 7 year old girl witnessing death.  In the novel station eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Arthur Leander, a common day equivalent to Brad Pitt, has a heart attack on stage, and after that, everything ceases. In the story, Arthur Leander is the sun, and the other character’s stories are the planets which revolve around the sun. Mandel  eloquently ties her prominent characters and storylines into one perfect little bow. The desperation of the ended civilization is fluently expressed through Mandel’s use of language. Mandel similarly uses parallelism and other literary devices to tell the story. The novel’s title “Station 11” is based upon a series of comic books called station 11 in the novel. These comic books are used by Mandel to parallel the occurrences in the world, post-civilization.  The use of imagery in Mandel’s novel enables the reader to embed themselves within the story. The story is told through a scope of perspectives, one of which is seen through the eyes of an actress in the  traveling symphony, Kristen. Now, what is the traveling symphony? When all of society ended, the surviving people decided that the dark, electricity-less world needed light. They provided this light through art: shakespearean plays, and music.  The symphony travels across land by foot; they hunt for themselves, cook for themselves, and they survive off the land. Mandel is very descriptive in her scenes; she illustrates danger, distress, and hopelessness. Throughout the novel, the characters in the novel are in a constant brawl for their lives. The struggle for survival is consistent. Through Mandel's words, the frightful scenery the characters face are played like a movie in the mind of the reader. As the characters drudge through “great clouds of steam, [during] times when they were cold and afraid and their feet were wet” , the reader is able to imagine themselves as the helpless and cold symphony traveler(Mandel 119). She also paints an intimidating picture of the unknown. Through the use of the fear of the unknown, whether it be “blank walls of forest”, or  “wondering if an unhinged prophet or his men might be chasing them”, she instills fear within the readers in the most beautiful way(Mandel 119). The reader is able, through the descriptive illustrations she paints, to feel like they are in the book themselves. This allows the reading experience to enliven completely. Mandel similarly grapples the concept of “survival”: what does it really mean? Is survival really staying healthy, or does survival entail happiness and a fit mental state? Kristen has a tattoo engraved into her skin: survival is insufficient. The concept of art being a means of survival is a major player in this novel. There is a reason why these people risk their lives in the unknown to present their art to complete stranger. Mandel captures the true beauty of art with her words. She certainly uses too many words, which makes the novel quite dense, but in a grand sense, she communicates a beautiful concept to her audience.  A concept that is unforgettable and leaves the reader in awe. What would you preserve in an empty dark world? What would be your art?

"Station Eleven" Shows Humanity in a New Light

Thursday, September 25th, 2016

"Station Eleven" Presents Humanity In The Face Of Destruction

While most post-apocalyptic novels tell stories of destruction, chaos, and death, Emily St.John Mandel’s Station Eleven introduces the possibilities of life, love, family, hope, and beauty. Station Eleven analyses the underlying beauty of human nature shown by the destruction of the world, and efforts to create a new one. By doing so, this novel is able to compel readers to think beyond known civilization and society, so that all there is left to ponder is the core of humanity. I believe that Mandel’s most important point in the book is that if the world ended in destruction, sorrow, and death; there will always be hope within humanity. Mandel’s unconventional voice allows readers to consider the essence of hope succeeding the catastrophe.She effectively shows the beauty of hope  by utilizing a passionate voice to showcase the elements of various symbols in the book. This gives the reader deep insight inside the novel and makes the reader rethink the world as an entirety.

Station Eleven begins with events preceding the apocalypse caused by a flu epidemic. The novel first sets out during a King Lear play in Toronto, Canada. The star of the play, Arthur, a 51-year old actor, has a sudden heart attack on stage. In attempts to revive him, Jeevan, a man who knew CPR in the crowd runs onto the stage. After his attempts, Jeevan looked to exit the theater, when he notices a young girl crying, Kristen. Kristen and Jeevan are later revived and intertwined together throughout the story. They also continue to be addressed after the end to the modern world. Kristen appears again twenty years later post-apocalypse. At this time most of the modern world and the people in it are destroyed, now known as the ‘Old Word’, this newborn world after the destruction is referred to as the ‘New World’. Within the New world, Kristen  is a part of something known as the Traveling Symphony, a band of musicians that perform musicals and concerts in small towns and civilization. In Station Eleven, the Traveling Symphony is Mandel’s most prominent symbol of hope. They are viewed as such because of their dedication to spreading plays, music, and concepts of love and family from the Old World.        

Mandel uses an especially passionate voice when talking about the Traveling Symphony which contributes to their impact as a symbol. “ But what made it bearable were the friendships, of course, the camaraderie, and the music and the Shakespeare, the moments of transcendent beauty and joy when it didn’t matter who’d used the last of the rosin on their blow or who anyone had slept with” (Mandel, 49) I believe it is within this excerpt where Mandell first truly exemplifies her passion for the Symphony. She describes quite wistfully the important elements of the Symphony and why they matter. Throughout the novel, due to Mandel’s passionate voice when speaking of the Symphony, readers begin to understand its importance. They start to think about the significance the Symphony brings to its participants as well as those who view their performances. It is within the Traveling Symphony where the Old World can be rehashed and reminisced. They can also be equated to the beauty and hope of humanity . When the Symphony performs for people Mandel passionately describes the joy and beauty they bring the audience and themselves, “What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there was still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of a Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Mandel, 57). Despite the ‘end of the world’ the group is a family that spread joy, happiness and music throughout the remains of civilization. The transcendent unity and joy that the Symphony brings to itself and to others transpire hope onto the thought that even though the Old World is nonexistent, the New World can still contain its elements. Without Mandel's earnest voice when speaking of the Symphony, the message she is trying to pull across of hope within humanity, the novel wouldn't make much of an impact.

Mandel’s unusual perspective and beautiful voice makes this book ardent. The Traveling Symphony allows us to broaden our thoughts of our views of human nature as a whole and question whether or not family, love, and hope would transcend the destruction of humanity. It is through Mandel’s passion that the reader gains insight into Station Eleven. Mandel drives us to question what would happen if the world were to end; what would remain, and what would cease.

Station Eleven...Worst Book Ever?

Pat Piscatelli Emily St. John Mandel’s new book, Station Eleven, follows a group of Shakespearean actors after the collapse of the world due to a disease. Yes, Mandel somehow sees the importance of Shakespeare and acting in a world of anarchy and demise. Mandel also writes about the world before the epidemic. Mandel bounces from past to present and then back to past throughout the book, often confusing the reader. Mandel, however, does a decent job of tying all the events past and present together in the end, but you still need to suffer through over three hundred pages of pointless paragraphs, and confusing stories to get there. The rewarding end does not compare to the horrendous beginning and middle of the book. Mandel’s book, Station Eleven, follows a group of Shakespearean actors and musicians, called the traveling symphony, in a post epidemic world. The group travels into a town and finds a christian prophet. The prophet believes that the symphony kidnapped one of his wives, so he decides to kidnap two members of the symphony. Looks like the post pandemic world did not affect the sanity of people; because of course a group of young actors and musicians you’ve never seen before clearly kidnapped your wife. After the kidnapping of the symphony members, and the alleged kidnapping of the prophet's wife conflicts start to arise between the group and the prophet. The fight between the groups continues until the dramatic ending. The book lacks in structure. The plot is confusing enough, but add in the past and present aspect and this book becomes like a teenagers room, a mess. Mandel starts the book with a man, Arthur, dying in a play, and that's where the book should have stopped. After the death of Arthur, Mandel jumps between characters and the time period so often you forget what was just written. “Ten minutes before the photograph, Arthur Leander and the girl are waiting by the coat check in a restaurant in Toronto. This is well before the Georgia Flu. Civilization won’t collapse for another fourteen years. Arthur has been filming a period drama all week, partly on a soundstage and partly in a park on the edge of the city” (Mandel 71). If the structure of the book flowed better chronologically maybe the novel could be decent. In addition to having terrible structure, Mandel also struggled in her writing techniques. She switches from passive voice to active voice randomly. This not only is strange but it also is confusing. Mandel struggled with diction in the book. "Clark woke at four a.m. the next morning and took a taxi to the airport" (Mandel 223). Instead of took Mandel should have wrote rode. Some books like, Lone Survivor, Unbroken, and Sherlock Holmes you can’t put down, but Station Eleven is hard to pick up. After ten pages the book has already bored you, and confused you enough to drive back to the bookstore and ask for your money back. Unless you are required to read it for school I cannot understand why anyone would read this book.

Disappointment Sandwich

Station Eleven is a riveting book that takes the lives of many people and intertwines them in ways that keep the audience wanting more; however, the audience will probably be disappointed in the end.  To start the book, an actor falls dramatically on stage, and an audience member immediately comes up onto the stage and starts performing CPR for the already dead man.  This is followed by the entrance of a young girl who is quickly ushered off and then the emergency workers come.  This is clearly foreshadowing from the author as to who the main characters will be.

After a slow start though, there comes the line that turns everything around and the story becomes interesting.  The other actors from the show are all in a bar and then the narrator says: “Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest. He died three weeks later on the road out of the city” (Mandel 15).  This line will turn even the most boring story into a book that cannot be put down.  The next chapter explains the event that opens up the book.  The Georgia Flu starts in Eastern Europe and quickly spreads throughout the world to decimate 99% of the human population.  What’s left are only a few main characters that are followed throughout the rest of the book in multiple smaller stories.

Emily St. John Mandel does a good job of giving each character its own life and its own reasoning in becoming a crucial part to the book.  The book starts in the center of the story, so throughout the rest of the book, the timeline goes back and forth through many of the chapters.  For some readers, this may be difficult to wrap their head around, but for others, this could be exceedingly  appealing.  After many small stories; and going through the main characters lives before and after the Georgia Flu, the characters all come together for the end for an anti-climatic finish. Woohoo!  Yes, it is impressive that an author could intertwine so many storylines so flawlessly, and yes, it does make for a good book, but in the end, the characters meet each other and that is it.  There is no real point for them all to meet up other than to satisfy the reader’s yearn for a connection.

Ending the book like this is unfortunate, as the rest of the book was very interesting.  Emily St John Mandel wrote a bestseller level book but there was no way of making a significant connection between the characters.  At best, all the characters knew Arthur but there was nothing to do with that information other than put it into the makeshift museum in the new settlement.  This is unfortunate because at the very end, the characters see light in the distance and do not even go towards it, which is very anti-climatic and leaves the reader expecting more.

Station Eleven: A World In Turmoil

Josie Battle

Station Eleven: A World in Turmoil

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is a complex book that pushes one to think beyond the realm of reality. Station Eleven tells the story of the lives of several characters after a fatal disease, the Georgia Flu, sweeps through the world, wiping out millions of people. There are four main characters in this book, whose lives all intertwine in a different way. The perspective on this book jumps around a lot, giving a mysterious and suspenseful plot. Station Eleven is an intriguing novel that delves into a postapocalyptic world and combines the unique tales of several characters.

One of the best parts about Station Eleven, was the character development over time. The book was curious in way that we started out knowing nothing about any of the characters, but by the end of the book, we knew everything about all the lives and the relationships of every person. The most impressively written interaction in this book was a conversation between Jeevan and Miranda. Miranda had just found out that her film star husband Arthur had been having an affair with Elizabeth Colton, one of his costars. Miranda goes outside, and runs into a paparazzi named Jeevan. They smoke a cigarette together and then out of nowhere, Jeevan catches Miranda off guard and takes her picture. “‘Hey!’ Jeevan says suddenly, and as Miranda turns, the cigarette halfway to her mouth, the flash of his camera catches her unaware” (Mandel 103). The desperation of both people is clear in this scene. For Miranda, she has just discovered that her husband is having an affair, and it caught in a moment of weakness, smoking a cigarette. Jeevan is not a bad person, and hates his job as a paparazzi, but is so tempted by the opportunity for a compromising photo that he takes it anyway. For a brief moment, there was no difference between Miranda and Jeevan. They were just two people having a normal conversation, sharing a cigarette. For a minute, the social status’ of Jeevan and Miranda didn’t matter, but in the blink of an eye, everything was back to normal. The interactions between characters is something Mandel does very well. All the conversations and relationships were clearly well thought out, and made for a better story.

There were several moral dilemmas in this novel. With the unexpected turmoil that came from the Georgia Flu, people were left to fend for themselves in a now completely lawless world. As people ran out of their food supply, they faced the difficult decision of whether to go out into the dangerous world, or face the risk of starvation. When the disease first broke out in Toronto, Jeevan stocked up on food and went to stay with his handicapped brother, Frank. Although they had enough food to last them a few months, the time came when there was a tough choice to make. There was no way that both Frank and Jeevan could survive in the apartment anymore, and Frank would certainly not survive in the unhandicap friendly world. As they are discussing the future, Frank says, “I think there’s just survival out there, Jeevan. I think you should go out there and try to survive” (Mandel 183). The uncertainty of the time and the sensibility that Frank had were shown in this conversation. Frank knew that he wouldn’t survive a second in the new and dangerous world, so he encouraged Jeevan to leave without him. Although this makes sense, it is such a terrible thing to do. For Jeevan it is completely scarring to leave behind his disabled brother as he wanders aimlessly into the unknown world. Mandel got your emotions running as you are read this book. She brought up ideas that made you have to think beyond the realm of possibility. This style of writing should be highly praised.

Mandel did a great job of making you think during this book. The themes that she presented in Station Eleven were unlike that of most other books. As one reads this novel, they can’t help but think, “What would I do if I were in this position?” The concept that the whole world could be wiped out is such a foreign idea in this day and age. Mandel also talked about the dying out of technology, and how it took a few days before the internet just stopped working. In our society, where everyone is so dependent on their technology, being made to think about what would happen if you were suddenly cut off from all forms is hard to imagine. Overall, I would highly praise Mandel’s Station Eleven. It was a story that made you ponder the material items in the world, and how you would live without them.

Station Eleven: Survival Tips

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mendel intertwines the present world with one devastated by a plague, which wipes out 99% of the world’s population and where currency, electricity, and even twitter have fallen useless in the matter of hours. Mendel’s fourth book, and her best by far, is a National Book Award and a PEN/FAULKNER finalist. It jumps on the apocalyptic bandwagon that has controlled the Young-Adult genre for years and has since then crossed into the adult sector. She also plays into the ever-growing fear of the nearing global pandemic, in fact it’s the central theme. The fear angle worked on me seeing as I read the book on a rickety bus driving into the remote desert of a relatively unknown and underdeveloped Arab country known as Oman. Station Eleven got me thinking about how my situation would work out if the apocalypse happened at the moment, but otherwise the plotlines fell flat in Mandel’s vivid new world and I felt unattached to the characters in the overused backdrop.

An actor’s second ex-wife, his son, and his long-time best friend were all on the same flight on the day of the apocalypse, without him. They were flying to attend his funeral. There’s a girl who has been walking since the day of apocalypse: at first for survival, now performing Shakespeare and Bach in a troop called the Travelling Symphony. A man who witnessed the actor’s death the day before the apocalypse, and then hid with his paraphyletic brother as they watched the world end from their apartment. At the first introduction of the characters, I was intrigued to learn the connections and their solution for survival. Instead, I found the characters to be static and flat. The son was quiet and obsessive, the best friend was philosophical and patient, the girl was creative and inquisitive. Each was put in a box and by the end, they were still in that box.

A passage that stood out because it shows the complexity of both the syntax of her writing and the world that she created, started with, “The first winter in the Severn City Airport: There was a frisson of excitement on Day Two…” (242). Mandel uses unique syntax and sentence structure style. By bending the grammar rules with that first phrase, it sets everything up afterward to be a list of how the world has changed. Many of the chapters start off this way: not so much with plotline, but more of a list of in depth descriptions of differences between our world and the post-plague world. This style creates a world that readers can easily picture, but makes it easy to skim through large chunks of text in order to find actual plot.

Later in that same passage, Mandel describes a couple talking about twitter shortly after the catastrophe, “...his girlfriend said, wistful. ‘You know, like, ‘Not much, just chilling with Arthur Leaner’s kid at the end of the world’’” (242).  In just a simple sentence, Mandel gave readers a chilling reminder of how useless all of the popular social media platforms would be, no matter how powerful twitter is in 2015. Although, it’s a common theme found across the media and it makes an easy jab at the uselessness and pettiness of the rising generation. The apocalypse trope is an unoriginal way to scrutinize today’s society and reimagine one with a new set of problems; however, Mandel took her world to the next level with her creation of different societies, hierarchies, and economic systems.

The combination of flat characters, unending descriptive passages, and an exasperating trope left me uninterested in the general plotline of the novel, but I was still curious to find out how some characters survived. In my mind, I needed those survival tips as I was going deeper into the Empty Quarter. If the world ended then, I would be stuck with a very interesting group of people and I would never be able to talk to my family again. More importantly, we would never know that the world had ended. Mandel, through Station Eleven, sent me on a mission to figure out how I would find food and water in the Empty Quarter.
-Sophie Norton

Station Eleven, the thought provoking

“There is only here, she told herself” for better or for worse; that's what this book taught us. Whether it be a moment you enjoy or despise you must live in it. In the book Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel outlines a post apocalyptic world that challenges our society at its very core; social interactions. Characters from completely different social backgrounds are challenged with their demons after a dangerous virus wipes out most of the world. A travelling symphony, which satisfies the most basic entertainment needs of humans, is in Mandel's main focus throughout this novel. She tracks their travel throughout unpopulated areas and thereby develops a narrative that forces the reader to reflect on his life from an outside perspective and evaluate what really matters. In the end human relationships prove resistant to all challenges. When the system that rewards individuals for most effectively ripping off one another is destroyed social integrity thrives instead of dwindling.

Utilizing this powerful narrative Mandel reveals deep rooted fallacies in our society. This narrative worked for me because it continuously forced me to transfer myself into individual characters positions and evaluate what I would do if faced with their challenges. This made me think about what I would really cherish if all the superficiality of society faded away and the reality remained. The cornerstone idea of this novel that “Survival is insufficient” provokes this thought paradigm. It is not enough to drudge yourself through the mundane world and run along with the stream of superficialities that our society uses to cover up its insecurities and flaws. In order to be truly happy we need to strive to make every single second of our lives the best possible thing it can be because that opportunity could vanish by the next second.

This constant thought process furthermore engages the reader in reflections of their own life. What are you making of it? Are you doing things because they are expected of you or are you doing them out of conviction? Mandel’s unique way of telling a story made me intimately assess every character's motivations and righteousness. Whether it was Clark’s conviction to preserve artifacts of society or Kirsten's will to survive at all costs, all characters portrayed one coping mechanism of human nature. This intimate evaluation of each character made me ponder the perspective of everything I cherish gone. I was forced to reassess what and who I would really miss, what and who really means something to me, and if I am making potentially the same mistakes that these characters regret. I was gifted all the possibilities that the apocalypse survivors fight for every day. Am I making the most of this amazing gift? This intense self reflection confirmed me in my conviction not to “spend” all my life “waiting for [my] li[fe] to begin.”

However this powerful narrative also bore many challenges for the reader. Because so many characters were illuminated by the plot it was often hard to discern every character's unique contribution to the main message. I often found myself confused by the intricate complications of the plot line and the twists and turns of the story telling perspective. Although I did not fully understand everything in the plot the insights I did gain would not have been possible without her unique narrative.

As more and more world wide competition arises students lives and education are being transformed into an arms race instead of an environment that individuality can thrive in. More than ever before does our future require creative thinkers who create jobs that aren’t even imaginable right now. As automatization creeps forward even into traditionally creative and intellectual fields a stress for free thinking and creative spirit is evermore important. Because “survival is insufficient” and because more than the pursuit of superficial materialistic commodities we need fulfillment and the certainty that what we are dedicate our lives to matters.

the superlative subjunctive: I Said

the superlative subjunctive: I Said