Station Eleven: Post-Apocalyptic Comedy and the Improbable Happy Ending

We’ve seen the world end dozens of times. Over the past few decades, post-apocalyptic stories have fascinated us. These stories are generally dark. Tragic. For years, the walking dead It tells a very sad and very cruel tale of human civilization succumbing to the zombie apocalypse and the inevitable collapse of people and places. road It offers a dreary grey world, where the sea is no longer blue and other human inhabitants are assumed to be robbery cannibals unless they prove otherwise. The Last of Usis another post-apocalyptic tragedy, full of death, loss, and human cruelty, as its characters walk among the fungi in a video game and TV show. Post-apocalyptic stories have long been popular, but in recent times, these movies, shows, and books have carved out an even bigger niche in the entertainment market.

Post-apocalyptic stories are practically tragedies. The genre demands a great deal of death, loss, and violence. That’s why I was surprised when I read Emily St. John Mandel’s Post-apocalyptic. Station ElevenThe novel’s end-of-the-world plot is actually full of hope, and it left me wondering whether, with all the post-apocalyptic tragedy, there’s room for post-apocalyptic comedy.

Tragedy and comedy

A highly contagious and deadly disease called the “Georgia Flu” spread quickly to every corner of the globalized world. Before humanity had time to react, the flu killed over 99% of the human population. The next two years were marked by doubt, displacement, and danger. After this harsh period, the world, rather than falling into chaos, began to get better as people dealt with the fact that civilization had collapsed and the world would never be the same as before. People began to trust each other again as they settled together in towns and villages. Kirsten Raymond, who was a child when the world ended but has lived in the New World for 20 years since the outbreak of the “Georgia Flu,” testifies to how safe the world has become. In the novel, she reflects that “the world had softened” and that “it was much less dangerous than it had been.”¹

This stable and safe environment gave rise to (you guessed it) a traveling troupe of instrumentalists and actors. Called the “Symphony Orchestra,” this group of musicians and actors traveled from settlement to settlement performing musicals and plays, including Shakespeare. This feature alone shows that Mandel has created a different, more optimistic world than many other post-apocalyptic landscapes. If you try to force in a traveling Shakespeare company, the walking dead, The Last of Usor roadThat won’t work, you’ll be torn to pieces before the break.

Rather than a post-apocalyptic tragedy, Mandel wrote what I would call a post-apocalyptic comedy, and by post-apocalyptic comedy I don’t necessarily mean comedy in the modern sense as a piece of entertainment with no real stakes, merely a vessel for jokes. Shaun of the Dead Other similar modern comedies do this. I mean things like Shakespeare’s comedies, which are funny, but also tend to have a lot of drama and real stakes. The protagonist is assaulted on false charges, and her friends believe she has been “murdered for slanderous words.” Much Ado About Nothing. Twelfth Night The story begins with a pair of twin brothers who believe their brother has died in a shipwreck. Measure for Measure It includes dramatic monologues and execution threats interspersed with syphilis jokes.

Obviously, these comedies are not lacking in drama or substance: comedies in this sense usually involve a “things don’t always go smoothly, but they overcome all odds and end up happily married” relationship.² Over its four acts, the comedy descends into darkness, chaos, and the ridiculousness of life, but has a happy ending. Lord Byron said, “All tragedies end in death. All comedies end in marriage.”³ There’s a lot of truth in this. Usually, you can tell the genre of a play by looking at its ending. Does one or more characters die at the end? Perhaps you’ve seen a tragedy. Do two or more characters get married? Or is there a celebration in the final act? Perhaps you’ve seen a comedy.

Two of Shakespeare’s plays Station ElevenTragedy and comedyKing Lear and A A Midsummer Night’s Dream. rear The play will be performed two weeks before the end of the world, and with its motifs of blindness, lust for power and deception, it represents Mandel’s pre-apocalyptic world, where no one is happy before the end of the world. Station ElevenClark, for example, is frustrated by “iPhone zombies – people half my age drifting off into their sleep, eyes glued to their screens.”^Four On his way to work, Clark tries to push them past him, forcing them to look away from their phones, but after one scene, he finds them and wants to apologize, because he realizes that, like them, he’s “almost out of this world.”^Five Instead of being obsessed with his smartphone, Clark is engrossed in his work, something he realised after a conversation with a woman who denounced the “high-functioning sleepwalkers” of the corporate world.⁶ For these people, “work is supposed to be a monotonous task with occasional moments of happiness,” but this “happiness” is actually a “distraction.”⁷

Many post-apocalyptic stories tend to idealize the world before the fall, as if the end of the world disturbs the perfect paradise of the pre-Fall. But Mandel is quick to point out the world’s flaws. Sure, many of us drift through life, dependent on our Apple or Android devices. Others neglect their family, social life, and physical health in the pursuit of career advancement. Some obsess over the pixels on their smartphones, others over corporate promotions, and many quell the nagging misery with daily distractions. Isn’t this world tragic? And wouldn’t the end of the world be a good thing if it were also the end of modern misery?

A miserable man who takes responsibility for two failed marriages plays out his tragedy. King Lear Kirsten and her troupe are performing comedy before the world ends A Midsummer Night’s Dream Events following the end of the world. Unlike other depictions of the end of the world, Station Eleven I suspect the world is in the final act of tragedy and what happens next will be a comedy. Station Eleven Why not, when most other entertainment works in the same genre are dark and tragic?

Happy end

At some point Station ElevenIn The Last Journey, a group of people are stranded at an airport after a plague has devastated the world around them. Huddled together by shell-shocks, the survivors have only recently come to terms with the fact that no one is coming to their rescue. This dire realization prompts several pilots to hijack a plane. It has been a long time since the group has seen an airplane take off. For one character, watching the plane hurtle down the runway and soar into the sky is an emotional experience. He asks himself: “In a life of frequent travel, why have I never realized how amazing flying is before? How unlikely.”⁸

Emily St. John Mandel also had an unforgettable flight the day after her wedding. She was 26 years old and was on a flight with her newlywed husband on their honeymoon. The non-religious couple had received a copy of the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible) as a wedding gift. Trying to “not dwell on the intrusiveness” of the gift, Mandel began to read the text during the flight.⁹ The secular author admits that he was bored with the book before he began to read it. Song of SongsPerhaps she was especially drawn to this passage because she had recently gotten married. Song of Songs” Pierced [her] She speaks highly of the Bible, describing it as a “mystical, beautiful, sublime” book.

Why was she so bored with the rest of the Hebrew Bible? Song of Songs Why is this so moving? There are probably a few reasons for this. Song of Songs While it is certainly unique in the biblical canon, the book’s themes likely resonated with Mandel’s situation, and the lyrical beauty of the poems no doubt appealed to her as a writer, but perhaps deeper than all of these reasons is the beauty of the weddings depicted in the book. Song of Songs We spoke to Mandel: Weddings are beautiful things. They bring together all of life’s greatest blessings in one celebration: family, friends, food, music, dancing, and romance. As Jesus said, weddings are an occasion for feasting and celebration, not fasting and mourning (Matthew 9:15).

The Bible, like any good comedy, ends with a wedding celebration. After the horrors of the beast, disease, and the bursting of the universe, the Book of Revelation at the end of the Bible takes a decidedly comic turn. In the final chapter of Revelation, all is set right, and John hears the crowds shouting for joy. With a voice like thunder and a flood, they shout that the marriage supper of the Lamb has come (Revelation 19:6-9(Jesus finally celebrates his marriage to his bride, the church. Like in any good comedy, Christ and his bride are unlikely to be paired together. Christ was a totally faithful hero who chose to pursue a terrible, unfaithful bride. But his love conquered all odds, and he will one day enjoy a wedding feast with his beautiful bride, and we will live happily ever after.)

Most of the post-apocalyptic stories we enjoy are tragic. They end with death and little to no hope. Although these stories have meaning, Christians must remember that the Bible’s endings are comic, not tragic.

1. Emily St. John Mandel Station Eleven (New York: Vintage Books, 2015), 132, 114. ↩︎
2. M. H. Abrams and Jeffrey Galt Harpham, Literary terminology explanation(Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 10th ed., 2012)54. ↩︎
3. Lord Byron, Don Juan3rd canto. ↩︎
4. Mandel, Station Eleven160. ↩︎
5. Ibid., 164. ↩︎
6. Ibid., 163. ↩︎
7. Ibid., 163. ↩︎
8. Ibid., 247. ↩︎
9. Emily St. John Mandel Closed World: I sat down and cried in Grand Central Station, The Millions, March 7, 2014. ↩︎