Emily Mandel's Station Eleven

The earliest records of humanity were recently discovered in the form of 40,000-year-old cave paintings in Spain. Since the beginning of humanity art and humanity have been closely entwined. Arts are often called the “humanities” for a reason, the arts are an innate and primal part of our race. Historically often when we see technological advancement we see an explosion of art, Greco-Roman culture and the Renaissance are two primary examples of this. Art is undeniably important to society and Emily Mandel illustrates this intertwinement beautifully in her dystopian novel Station Eleven. Station Eleven tells the stories of four people who live in a modern time where a disease wipes out 99% of the world's population. Through the mediums of theater, visual art and history Station Eleven illustrates that the humanities are a primitive part of humanity.
In Mandel’s pre-collapse society acting has been transformed over the years from an expressive theatrical art to a commercialized and sometimes repulsive business. This is shown in a few different ways. Firstly the focus of the paparazzi and the entertainment media cult shows how the culture around acting has been perverted and distorted into a stalkerish following of actors lives. This represents acting as a whole and it’s distancing from the

Miranda, Arthur's wife, is an artist and her job is seen by Arthur's actor friends as cute but meaningless. One of Arthur's actor friends remarks about her art project “ What's the point of all that work if no one might ever see it?” (Mandel,95) But even if one person sees the beauty in that art or is touched deeply by it the art is worth it, because if an art piece touched twenty people profoundly out of twenty thousand viewers that make it worth it. Because the value of art is what other people see in it like how post-apocalyptic Kirsten is obsessed with Miranda's art and cannot get