1. Arthur Leander

            Arthur Leander is one of the main characters in the Station Eleven novel because many characters are intertwined with him. Moreover, the story begins with his death, and also ends with him in the last chapter. He is a Hollywood star in the novel world. Arthur in King Lear’s role dies on the stage in a winter night at Elgin Theatre in Toronto by heart attack, the night Georgia Flu is going to destroy approximately everyone and everything. The story begins with an apocalyptic event. Arthur is from a small island, Delano Island in British Colombia. He continues his study in Toronto, but he changes his major to become an extremely successful actor in Hollywood. Finally, his life ends very tragically on stage. It seems his role in King Lear is just a pretext to go back to his homeland to die there. He married three times. His first marriage is with Miranda who is from the same island as him. Arthur has a deep regret of his past life, his marriages, divorces, and being distant from his only child in the last days of his life. One of his regrets is Miranda. “He felt the old guilt. She’d never asked for any of it” (Mandel 318). Even though she is not the mother of his son, Arthur needs to see her in his days of depression and regret. “’You were the one I wanted to call’, he said… ‘But why me? We have not spoken since the last divorce hearing.”’ (Mandel 207).

            His destiny is repeating in circular ways, for example after many years he goes back and dies in his country. The other example: he dislikes to be known in his small island, but he chooses or his destiny moves him to Hollywood where he cannot live a private life from paparazzi. He leaves his small island, his homeland because that place was so small and everyone knows everyone. He says to Clark, “Everyone knew me, not because I was special or anything, just because everyone knew everyone… I just wanted some privacy. For as long as I could remember I just wanted to get out, and then I got to Toronto and no one knew me. Toronto felt like freedom” (Mandel 223).

            Arthur’s part in the role of King Lear has symbolic meaning. King Lear is one of the Shakespeare master pieces. He has three daughters, one of whom has pure love to her father, but King Lear knows this reality when it is too late. Cordelia, Lear’s youngest daughter does not care for luxury court of King Lear. Arthur, a brilliant Hollywood actor, also has three marriages. Miranda, his first wife does not also care for luxury of Hollywood. Arthur also thinks about Miranda in the last days of life. King Lear and Cordelia die in the end of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Arthur and Miranda also die in Station Eleven novel. King Lear, with his stupidity, causes his own death, his daughters, wars and destructions. Arthur also with his stupidity causes his own death, and in a symbolic form destruction of the world.

2. Jeevan Chaudhary

            The story begins with the death of Arthur and introduces Jeevan. Arthur’s death brings Jeevan a kind of unknown happiness that makes him wonder, but later he finds out why. He works in different trades through many years. Recently he had training in paramedics. The moment Arthur falls on stage, he runs toward him to help. “… in the first row of the orchestra section a man was rising from his seat. He’d been training to be a paramedic.” (Mandel 3). Now he knows what he wants to do in his life; be a paramedic. “He’d been searching for a profession for so long now. He’d been a bartender, a paparazzo, an entertainment journalist, then a paparazzo again and then once again a bartender, and that was just the past dozen years” (Mandel 16). Jeevan helps Arthur another time when he booked an interview with Arthur as an entertainment journalist. Arthur proposes to Jeevan to tell him a unique story on the condition that it would not be shared with anybody for twenty four hours. Arthur has decided to leave Elizabeth and his young son for Lydia Marks, his costar. “’ I’m moving in with Lydia next month, he said, ‘and Elizabeth doesn’t know yet. I flew here a week ago when I had the day off from filming, specifically to tell her, and I just couldn’t do it.’” (Mandel 172, 173). He is using Jeevan to write a sensitive story in his newspaper because he cannot himself say to Elizabeth he is leaving her. It is a shameful set up, but anyway Jeevan helps Arthur.

            Jeevan’s character before and post-collapse is different. His job as a paparazzi bothered famous actors and their families. Later in post-collapse world, his role as a doctor is a lifesaving character. Before collapse, he did not have a good relationship with his girlfriend, Laura. The night of Arthur’s death, she leaves Elgin Theatre without saying anything to him. Hours later, they cannot even be friendly on the phone, and keep interrupting each other. In contrast, conversation between Jeevan and Hua is friendly and pleasant. He understands her. Inversely, in the post-collapse world, Jeevan has a good family and loves his wife. It seems everything has changed in a good way for him even though the world is not as civilized as before.

            Changing Jeevan’s character and job, maybe has special meaning: humans show a different personality depending on the circumstances, and also modern civilization is not always useful for society. Paparazzi, as one of the jobs related to modern life and celebrities, it has often been troublesome for famous people. It can endanger security, privacy and their happiness. It builds gossip and ruins the spirits.  

3. Kirsten Raymonde,

            It seems that there are two Kirstens in the novel. The first Kirsten is eight years old. She is growing up well groomed. She is a child actress who has a small role on stage with Arthur, as one of three King Lear’s young daughters. She is also a witness to Arthur’s death on stage during a production of King Lear. Then, we learn that she loses her parents because of pandemic. She and her brother escape from Georgia Flu, but she loses his brother also because of a simple infection. She has two souvenirs from Arthur, a copy of Dr. Eleven’s comic-book. Arthur gives her this book himself the night of his death. She has also a paperweight that belongs to Arthur, but he passes that to Tanya. Tanya gives it to Kirsten the night of Arthur’s death. In all of the years’ post-collapse, she is carrying them in her bag back.

            The second Kirsten is an adult in the post-collapse world, tattoo of two knives on her right wrist, and equipped with weapons for protecting her life. After death of his brother, she joins a Travelling Symphony, a theater troupe that travels from town to town and plays music and performs Shakespeare plays. She has changed very much, but she has not changed her profession. Her presence in the novel has a key role, not only because she is a witness to Arthur’s death, but she continues her role as an artiste. Symbolically, the hidden message is that art is the best means to really live instead of just surviving. It is interesting when we see the motto of the Traveling Symphony emphasizes on this meaning. “All three caravans of the Traveling Symphony are labeled as such, THE TRAVELING SYMPHONY lettered in white on both sides, but the lead caravan carries an additional line of text: Because survival is insufficient.” (Mandel 58). Her symbolic role as an exhibitor of art and a peace messenger expands at the last chapters of novel, when she meets old Clark in Severn City Airport. He shows her an extraordinary thing in horizon one night by telescope. An unbelievable phenomenon in post-collapse, it is electricity. “In the distance,… There, plainly visible on the side of a hill some miles distant: a town, or a village, whose streets were lit up with electricity.” (Mandel 311).

            Clark chooses Kirsten to watch the lights of electricity and spread this great news to other people in other cities because she is a traveler. It does stabilize her positive role in the novel. Indeed maybe, I can say that she is a real prophet not Tyler because she is like a Prophet of the Old Testament traveling to state her art of immortality and the news of lights, the electricity; a woman who is a prophet and has chosen to bring hope to the world, the hope to rebuild and regain civilization.      

4. Elizabeth Colton (2nd wife)

            Elizabeth is Arthur’s co-star and a woman who Arthur leaves his first wife Miranda. In Arthur and Miranda’s third anniversary, Arthur has been looking at Elizabeth all night. Elizabeth and Arthur, knowing or not knowing, hurt Miranda. That night, Elizabeth tells Miranda “No one ever thinks they’re awful, even people who really actually are…” ( Mandel 106). That shows her attitude. Years later in a vast look, we see how his son, influenced by her, hurt people in the post-collapse world. She has a strange character with superstitious ideas. Conversations describing and admiring the historic city of Prague, during the night Arthur celebrating their marriage, Elizabeth says that she likes living somewhere with history. After her divorce with Arthur, she moved to Israel with his son Tyler. “’Why Israel? Arthur said miserably. ‘That’s the part I don’t understand.”’ (Mandel 111). Gradually, it turns out why she chooses the city, the center of Prophets and elders in historic cities. After collapse, she believes that pandemic is a way to cleanse the earth, and as every mother, who has influence on her child, ingrains this belief in Tyler. After her death, Tyler claims that he is a prophet.

5. Tyler Colton

            Tyler is the same age as Kirsten. He has a copy of Dr. Eleven comics like Kirsten, and during collapse his dog’s name is the same as Dr. Eleven’s, Luli. He is raised in Jerusalem with his mother and far from his father. During the collapse, at first he lives in Severn City Airport with his mother. Step by step, under the influence of her mother he becomes a religious extremist who believes that Georgia Flu is a divine cleansing. “’The flu, the prophet said, ‘the great cleansing that we suffered twenty years ago, that flu was our flood.”’ (Mandel 60). In his point of view, there is a reason for those people who survive. When a cult arrives, he and his mother join them to leave the airport. Years later, Tyler becomes their leader and calls himself the Prophet. He is gathering of a group of religious fanatic people who equip with arsenal of weapons. Having the power and the gun, his attitude to girls, multiple marriages same as his father, but with a difference: he weds young girls by force.

            The presence of this evil character in the form of prophet with religious extremist beliefs reminds me of ISIS who makes terror all over the world in recent years. He and his fundamental thoughts are as dangerous as the atomic bomb. They are kind of zombies and their target is destruction. In my opinion, the World War III has just begun.

6. Miranda (1st wife)

            Miranda is also one of the main characters in the novel. When she is very young she has an abusive boyfriend, Pablo who she supports by working and paying the bills. Miranda is an artiste who has a comic book project and Pablo usually mocks her. “’You’re always half on Station Eleven’, Pablo said during a fight a week or so ago, ‘and I don’t even understand your project. What are you actually going for here?’” (Mandel 87). To leave Pablo, she feels freedom. After meeting Arthur they decide to marry. During three years living with Arthur and Hollywood actors’ world, she cannot fit in this kind of life. The night of celebrating their anniversary, Arthur is cheating on her. After divorce, she regains her freedom, and continues her career in a good position in a shipping company, Neptune Logistics. Throughout her life, she changes very much, from a young malformed to an independent elegant woman. The most important point in her life is working on her project, comic books through the years.

            The strangest part of her character is not having any friends except her comic book’s characters. “Her friendlessness is never mentioned in gossip blogs…” (Mandel 94). What is important is that she is happy with this life style, no friends and just works on her book. “It makes me happy. It’s peaceful, spending hours on it.” (Mandel 95).  She is the creator of Dr. Eleven. The title of the novel is also derived from a space station where Dr. Eleven lives. She is from Delano Island, same as Arthur. When he suggests seeing each other after eleven years of their divorce, she asks why. “’ You know where I’m from’, he said, and she understood what he meant by this. Once we lived on an island in the ocean. Once we took the ferry to go to high school, and …”’ (Mandel 207). 

            Miranda has used some of her life experience and elements with Arthur to write her book, for example their dog’s name is Luli, and in Station Eleven also Dr. Eleven’s dog name is Luli. There are many analogues that Miranda has used in her comic book from his personal life; especially the guests who attended the dinner party in Los Angeles. “… he recognizes the dinner party, he was there. He remembers the Para woman, her glasses and her presentation. The man sitting beside her bears a passing resemblance to Clark. The blond woman at the far end of the comic-book table is unmistakably Elizabeth Colton, and the man beyond her in the shadows looks a little like Arthur. Once Clark sat with all of them in Los Angeles, at a table under electric light. On the page, only Miranda is missing, her chair taken by Dr. Eleven.” (Mandel 332). Dr. Eleven has some resemblance to Pablo too. “… a brilliant physicist who bears a striking physical resemblance to Pablo but is otherwise nothing like him.” (Mandel 83). The conscious usage of these analogues allows me to conclude that the life in fiction world and the life in real world are reflections of each other.

            “Dr. Eleven is a physicist who took his name from the space station where he lives.” (Mandel 83). In my opinion, his name represents number of years after Miranda’s divorce too. He belongs to the future. A hostile alien civilization attacks earth and enslaves the people, but “Dr. Eleven and his colleagues slipped Station eleven through a wormhole and are hiding in the uncharted reaches of deep space. This is all a thousand years in the future.” (Mandel 83). Miranda after her divorce never married again. Eleven years has passed since her divorce. Dr. Eleven is a combination of three characters. His physical resembles Pablo, his character Miranda and his name, Eleven, which refers to Arthur and numbering of years living with Miranda.  Arthur is not successful with women. Dr. Eleven is also unlucky in this sense. “He is afraid of nothing but has poor luck with women.” (Mandel 83). In my opinion, this story has a hidden side. There is a resemblance in the way Miranda releases her beloved character, Dr. Eleven, to space (the skies). Mandel gives a heart attack to her hero Hollywood star, Arthur, and sends him to the skies.

7. Clark Thompson

            Clark is Arthur’s closest friend, and a person who calls Miranda, in Malaysia, and tells her the news of Arthur’s death. It is the last month that telephones are working. He meets Arthur in acting class when they are seventeen years old in Toronto. Later he is going to England and Arthur to NYC. Some years later, Clark becomes a successful lawyer and comes to L.A. During collapse, when Clark is reading Miranda’s comic book he remembers details of Arthur and Miranda’s anniversary, and he cries. That night, when Miranda knows Arthur is cheating on her, Clark makes her aware that everyone knows that. There is a key connection between Clark and Miranda, a paperweight that journeys through time; before and after the collapse. The paperweight also journeys person to person. At first, Clark brings it to Arthur at anniversary party night. Miranda takes it for many years. “Her gaze falls on the gift that Clark brought this evening, a paperweight of clouded glass…, but she knows she’s going to keep it forever.” (Mandel 104). Miranda sends it back to Arthur a while before collapse, but he does not have any memory of it, so he re-gifts it to Tanya. Subsequently, Tanya gives it to Kirsten at the night of Arthur’s death on stage. In the world of post-collapse, the paperweight belongs to Kirsten. The journey of this little object not only during the time, but from a person to other is such as a precious heritage that moves generation to generation in a family; the heritage that has a connective role between members of a family at a broad look of a society. A paperweight that keeps papers from scattering, keeps characters in connection, symbolically.

            Clark who is a lawyer in the world before collapse becomes a curator of Museum of Civilization in the Severn City Airport. He compiles meticulously any items of technology like iPhones, tablets, credit cards and etc. What is interesting is that in our period we compile everything that belong to humans in the past. In the post-collapse world is vice versa, Clark tries to collate present objects of Modern Civilization that broke up very fast by Georgia Flu. Present and history’s position in the museum has switched. Clark, as a curator, often tries to say to youngsters who come into his museum about the modern civilization. Young people who were born in an airport. “This was difficult to explain.”  (Mandel 231). After accepting his role as curator, he thinks it is his duty to find a good way to explain and answer the questions to the new generation. “’…, he was explaining now, to a sixteen- years-old who’d been born at the airport, the planes didn’t rise straight up into the sky. They gathered speed on long runways and angled upward. ‘Why did they need runways?’ the sixteen-years-old asked. Her name was Emmanuelle. He had a special fondness for her, because he remembered her birth as the only good thing that had happened in that terrible first years. ‘They couldn’t get off the ground without gathering speed. They needed momentum.”’ (Mandel 232).

            One of the reasons that Clark collects items of civilization and builds the Museum of Civilization is his boyfriend Robert. In the other words, to memory of Robert, he is setting up this museum. “Robert was a curator.” (Mandel 254). Although the formation of Museum is for Robert, he takes this duty seriously to preserve the obsolete items as evidences how the world was once. He decides to show the new generation of human’s effort to gain modern civilization. His brilliant idea to build Museum of Civilization is as worth as museum of antiquities. The generation after collapse is as much unware to Modern Civilization than we are towards last period. Clark as a curator, as a guard of Modern Civilization, and as a teacher teaches to new generation the human path to achieve this civilization. In the other words, Clark decides to give them the hope of following this path and regain modern civilization.

            In general, Clark has happiness in his life. He thinks he is lucky because he has been alive, he is lucky because he has seen the modern civilization, and again he is lucky because he has chance to see the beginning of this new world. “To have dwelt in that spectacular world for fifty-one years of his life. Sometimes he lay awake in Concourse B of the Severn City Airport and thought, ‘I was there,’ and the thought pierced him through with an admixture of sadness and exhilaration,”’ (Mandel 232).

            8. August

            August, a member of Travelling Symphony, is close friend of Kirsten. They can discuss about everything such as parallel universes. August’s character is not as bold as Kirsten in the book. He is violinist and also writes poem in secret. In his pre-collapse life, he loved watching TV, because of that he collects the obsolete TV guides when he breaks into abandoned houses with Kirsten. “…, August searched for issues of TV guide.” (Mandel 40). The interest point of his pre-collapse life is moving from place to place by military parents. Now in post-collapse world also he is travelling town to town to act and play music for people with other members of Travelling Symphony. However the traveling in the post-collapse world is not without danger. August and the other members of Symphony have to keep watch at around them from any kind of danger. “… Kirsten and August would keep watch at the camp, the fourth guitar and the oboe would scout a half mile ahead.” (Mandel 134). August is a man by faith. He says prayers for dead people. We see almost the name of August close to Kirsten everywhere. In a part of novel they separate of others, in form of symbolic, this separation of others shows the uniqueness of their friendship. They try to find and save the life of Sayid and Dieter from prophet and his men. “August was cursing under his breath. Sayid knelt on the road, his head in his hands, Kirsten ran to him and held his head to her chest…’The prophet’s behind us with the dog,’ Sayid Whispered. ‘He’s got two men with him.”’ (Mandel 285).   

9. Charlotte Harrison, Charlie

            Charlie plays cello, the second one in Travelling Symphony. She is August and Kirsten’s friend, and breaks into abandoned houses with them. She is married to Jeremy, and pregnant in year eighteen’s collapse. Charlie and Jeremy decide to stop in St. Deborah by the Water because they do not want to have any problems when she is giving birth on the road. Some years later, when Kirsten, August and the other members of Symphony arrive again to St. Deborah by the Water they cannot find Charlie. Nobody knows them, except one young boy. The city has a kind of strange spirit. Finally, Maria, a local midwife, tells Kirsten that Charlie with Jeremy and their child had to leave the city because of prophet. In the last parts of novel, Kirsten can see her old friend Charlie and her family in Severn City Airport. They are in Charlie’s tent and talk about various things including a strange memory of Charlie that was almost an unnatural instant. They entered in a ransacked and in disarray house, but they feel the presence someone else maybe a ghost there, except them. “… there was no dust on the tea set. The only footprints in the dust were hers and Charlie’s, and Charlie was not sitting close enough to the table to touch it… it was very easy to imagine that the rocking chair is moving…” (Mandel 307).

            A likable aspect of Charlie is having the fighting spirit and resisting oppression. She and her husband have power to stay front of prophet and say NO. Finally, they leave the city St. Deborah by the Water, its fanatic prophet and people. The other aspect of Charlie that is acceptable is when she has a lunatic moment. It is acceptable because it is very normal that between all characters in this novel, one of them has had a strange feeling. It is acceptable during the hard situation that they try to take it under control; one of them lost this control for moments. 

Works Cited

Mandel, Emily St. John. Station Eleven. Vintage Books, June 2015.­­