Discussion Questions:
What is the metaphor of the Station Eleven comic books? How does the Undersea connect to the events of the novel?
Who was your favorite character and why? Did you have a least favorite character other than the prophet?
Why are some characters referred to by their name, and other's just by the instrument they play. For example: the clarinet
The author weaves so many story lines together and connects them all in the end. What were some storylines or little details you enjoyed seeing her link together?
In the case of the story, is it better to have known a way of life and to lose it or to have never known it at all?
On page 278 Clark recalls with Garrett a time before the flu when they would abbreviate in emails and use idioms like "shoot off an email" and how silly it all seems now. Can you think of something you or society used to do 20 years ago that seems silly now?
Arthur Leander dies while performing King Lear, and the Traveling Symphony performs Shakespeare’s works. On page 57, Mandel writes, "Shakespeare was the third born to his parents, but the first to survive infancy. Four of his siblings died young. His son, Hamnet, died at eleven and left behind a twin. Plague closed the theaters again and again, death flickering over the landscape." How do Shakespearean motifs coincide with those of Station Eleven, both the novel and the comic?
Certain items turn up again and again, for instance the comic books and the paperweight—things Arthur gave away before he died, because he didn’t want any more possessions. And Clark’s Museum of Civilization turns what we think of as mundane belongings into totems worthy of study. What point is the author making?
Throughout the novel, those who were alive during the time before the flu remember specific things about those days: the ease of electricity, the taste of an orange. In their place, what do you think you’d remember most?
Jeevan stands out as a central character who ends up disconnected from the overall narrative. Why do you think Mandel chose to devote so much space to him?
The prophet seems to have great control in the novel. Could you see yourself following someone like him in similar circumstances.
Did you have any ideas about why symphony members, and then the entire symphony itself, disappeared from the road?
