Station Eleven, By Emily St John Mandel

It took one person to make a huge impact on humanity, changing 99.9% of the world’s population. Station Eleven is a novel written in 2014 by Emily St John Mandel. This novel focuses on the consequences that a flu outbreak left behind on Earth. People’s lives change, no longer having access to electricity, gas, cellphones or transportation. Practically a world that pressed the reset button, with only a small population to experience this world. The novel begins with Arthur Leander , an actor part of a play, King Lear. During the performance, Arthur has a major heart attack. Jeevan Chaudhary comes out of the large and lost audience where chaos was happening. Jeevan approaches Arthur in order to try to save his live. Unfortunately, Arthur dies
The novel fast forwards to twenty years later, revealing that Kirsten is now part of a troupe called The travelling symphony, together they perform Shakespeare. The novel makes connections between the characters lives before and after the virus, showing how everything falls into place. Station Eleven is an outstanding novel that shares messages , is a real page turner and teaches life lessons. High school students should be encouraged to read this novel, it does not appeal to only certain people but is applicable for all students preferences.

Station Eleven shares many important messages that are very relevant to the world today, such as appreciating the little things, what life is worth living for and never giving up. For Kirsten it is acting. She appreciates what she has left and turned it into something more, The travelling symphony. For Kirsten, acting is an important way to live because surviving in such world is not enough. Most things that vanished and can not be brought back rely on technology. Acting only relies on the way it is performed or expressed. “It’s the thing I love most in the world too,” (Mandel, 8) is Kirsten referring her passion for acting. Kirsten
The various lessons that were taught are how one choice can make a huge impact, survival is insufficient and what people’s priorities should be. The choice of one person was all it took to change the world. All everyone worked for, gone. No more concerts, shopping trips, friday night movie theatre dates, no more. The Georgia flu was originally only spread in Russia but one sixteen year old girl changed everything. The georgia flu would have eventually spread to North America but who knows how much longer they would have before so. Once the girl boarded that plane, infecting dozens of people, she had began a new world. All of those people all ended up in the emergency room, where they infected other people. The world could have gone a little longer without falling apart eventually. The plane that she boarded was one of the very last planes to ever take off again. Being aware of how one choice can affect many things or people is important to be recognized by high school students because being influenced by many different people will influence their decision making. “Sixteen year old girl flew in from Moscow last night,with flu symptoms[...],” (17) Hua who is an ER doctor explains to Jeevan the difficulties they are having at the hospital with many infected patients. Regardless, choice making is difficult, never knowing what the consequence will be or what