Station Eleven Literary Analysis

If an epidemic was happening where you live, what would be the first thing you would do? “Station Eleven” is a story written about an epidemic named the Georgia Flu that wipes out most of the earth's population. Years later The Symphony travels throughout the post-apocalyptic world to perform plays such as Shakespeare for settlements. “I am Legend” is about a man-made plague that mutates humans into bloodthirsty mutants and the main character’s journey to surviving.There are many stories out there about how people would theoretically try to survive.

While Emily Mandel’s “Station Eleven” and Richard Matheson’s “I am Legend” both follow a theme of survival, Mandel focuses more on after the flu while Matheson’s story puts his center of attention during the epidemic.

There are many similarities between Jeevan and Dr. Robert Neville with the way they handled the situation. For starters, they both are immune to the virus and are trying to survive day by day.

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While Robert is a former United States Army medical doctor that is looking for a cure. As you watch the movie, you realized everything he has done to survive such as putting up metal shutters on all the doors, an industrial lock on the door, multiple generators, surrounding the area with UV lights that will keep the darkseekers away looting houses section by section for food and anything to survive with such as lanterns and batteries. He sets his watch every day to 10 minutes before sundown to accommodate so he can survive.

As for his mentality he believes that there is nothing left out there, he tells Alice Braga the statistics on the survival rate that “six billion people on Earth when the infection hit. KV had a 90 percent kill rate, that's five-point four billion people dead. Crashed and bled out. Dead. Less than one-percent immunity. That left 12 million healthy people, like you, me, and Ethan. The other 588 million turned into your dark seekers, and then they got hungry and they killed and fed on everybody.” (Lawrence) By him saying this it explains that he believes everyone is dead and that there will never be a restoration in civiliazation.

As for Jeevan, he is a trained EMT that in the beginning of the book gets a call from an old friend warning him about the flu and tells him to get out of the city. He realizes that he can’t leave now because of his paraplegic brother needing a wheelchair accessible van, knowing this information he goes to the store and begins to stock up on items such as cases of water, cans of tuna, beans, and soup, toilet paper, frozen meat, aspirin, garbage bags, and bleach. After about 50 days the smell of rotting bodies begins to linger through the whole apartment and Jeevan knows he can’t stay there with Frank forever so he starts to think about ways to leave, soon realizing that it will be extremely difficult to navigate Frank through all the snow and barricades such as cars and concrete. Frank then goes on to tell Jeevan that he will leave first. This is foreshadowing him ending his life to let Jeevan survive without Frank slowing him down.

Then there is the difference between civilization and people’s hope in normal life again compared to their hope being crushed. In the film “I am Legend” it shows us how civilization won’t be better for a long time because they had no plan for after. They hoped a cure would be found but never pushed to find it, the only place known is Dr. Neville’s basement where he held rats and a darkseeker in trying to find the cure. While in “Station Eleven” at the beginning of the collapse, many people can’t accept that civilization has truly collapsed. They try to believe that before too long the lights will turn back on, technology will be their physical cut off to the world will be restored and the Red Cross will arrive and civilization will be reestablished.

In both “I am Legend '' and “Station Eleven” it speaks of a “safe haven” where some characters go to seek refuge. In “I am Legend '' there is a place in Bethel, Vermont, and it was turned into a refugee colony. The colony is supposedly a village-like community, which is heavily protected by enourmas walls to keep the Darkseekers from out of the colony. There are also many soldiers standing guard around the clock just beyond the gates. After the KV outbreak, people outside the gates or any other refugees that come along are required to be checked for infection before proceeding into the colony. Robert Neville didn't believe that the colony existed, he strongly believed that any and all evacuation centers or colonies were eiether destroyed or abandoned shortly after the outbreak. While in “Station Eleven” their safe haven is called McKinley and is located in an abandoned motel on an unused stretch of road far from any major highway across from a river. Now there were twenty-seven families living here and within ten years Jeevan had a family. Soon after Jeevan, Daria, and Michael discuss whether or not they should tell children how the world used to be by opening a school in McKinley. (Ginsberg 50) Then goes on to describe the fireflies coming out of the tall grass by the riverbank and Jeevan drinking wine, this shows that where he is in his life is very comfortable. (Mandel 269)

The virus impacted “Station Eleven” and “I am Legend” in many different ways. Station Eleven focuses on how it changed everyones lives that survived. Even though the virus didn’t arrive in the very beging it threw everyone off and overwhelmed everyone, as it would in a real life situation. The people in the story were reacting quickly, but no one was doing anything that was harmful or crazy. A character by the name of Jeevan was one of the people who acted like everyone should be doing, he stayed calm and stocked up. He was always one step ahead and made sure not to panic as everyone else was doing. Even though he was only preparing, the store clerk saw him as crazy. The Georgia Flu had a drastic impact, even though the symptoms were like the average flu, though it was fatal. No one who had the flu turned into zombies, they just died because the illness was too much for the immune system to handle. Since the flu was airborne it was a drastic change to the world, the epidimic was the end of the world, or so we thought. Even though it was like a regular sickness it didn’t have a cure. As for “I am Legend'' it was completely different, for example Robert has a flashback of his family and is trying to get them out of the city. They were testing each person for the virus before taking them out of the city, people that tested positive were screaming and became very physical. As the last helicopter began to fly off it was overrun with people tyring to hold on and leave the city, it then lost control and killed many civilians all because people began to panic.

While both Mandel’s book Station Eleven and Matheson's movie I Am Legend are both presented during post apocalyptic times, they follow the same main theme which is survival. Though they focus on different points off of that similar theme, such as Mandel focusing on after the flu while Matheson focused on during the epidemic and the similarities between Jeevan and Robert with their surivival instincts and habits. Station Eleven has more of a realalistic approach to the epidemic while I Am Legend goes towards a fantasy that does not show the realism that Station Eleven does.