Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Station Eleven, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Death and Survival
Faith and Fate
Civilization
Memory
Art
Summary
Analysis
In Year Nineteen, Clark is seventy years old. His friend Annette has died two years ago. Recently, Clark made available the reports from his executive consulting job, and now the former executives are very interested in them. Garrett and Clark discuss the report on a man named Dan and the platitudes used in discussing him as a boss.
In the Museum of Civilization in Year Nineteen, former executives reflect on the absurd jargon and the lifestyle that they had during the height of civilization.
Themes
After a long silence, Garrett asks, as he has many times, if he has ever told Clark about his last phone call. Though he was married with two children at the time of the collapse, his last call was to his boss and was meaningless. Garrett notes the comment from one of Dan’s employees that he was a high-functioning sleepwalker.
In retrospect, the fact that most people really were “iPhone zombies” or sleepwalking through their life is even more apparent than when Clark first wrote the reports.
Themes
Lately, Clark has been spending more time in the past, getting lost in his memories. He falls asleep, and wakes to Sullivan (the head of security), who wants to introduce Clark to the newest arrivals at Severn City Airport: Charlie, Jeremy, and Annabel. They ask if they are welcome to stay at the airport, since they have been separated from their people. Clark learns that they are from the Traveling Symphony he read about in the paper from New Petoskey. They say they lost their people because there was a prophet, who says he was from the airport. No one knows his name, but as they describe the prophet, Clark’s face shows a look of horror and realization; he knows who the prophet is. He asks Charlie and Jeremy if the prophet’s mother is still alive, to which they say they think not, as there was no old woman with him. Clark wonders what became of Elizabeth, and remembers Tyler, Arthur Leander’s son, now revealed to be the prophet, reading to the airplane as a young boy.
While Clark gets lost in memories, he is introduced to Charlie, Jeremy, and their daughter, and we learn that they have in fact made it to the Severn City Airport after leaving St. Deborah by the Water. What’s more, Clark reveals what has been suggested and foreshadowed throughout the novel: Tyler Leander is the Prophet. Tyler’s recitation of the Book of Revelations verses to the quarantined airplane marks his budding instability, his faith that everything happens for a reason, his desire to preach, his fascination with death, and his obsession with airplanes that will be reflected in the “t” symbol that he uses to mark people.
Themes
