Station Eleven

by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven: Style 1 key example

Style
Explanation and Analysis:

Station Eleven is about the persistence of memory and the collapse of the world, and Emily St John Mandel’s style reflects that in several ways. Scenes of the Georgia Flu’s rapid and terrifying spread unfold quickly from the novel’s outset. At the beginning, the narrative jumps back and forth in time haphazardly, making the reader feel some of the confusion Mandel’s characters are experiencing as the world they know dissolves. The frantic pace with which the flu destroys human bodies also mirrors the speed of civilization’s collapse. People scramble to escape pandemic hot zones and succumb to the flu within hours if infected, just as those hot zones also swell with energy and then rapidly collapse.