ESCAPING AND WITHSTANDING THE REALITY THROUGH ART IN EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL’S STATION ELEVEN

Abstract

Having been an ever-present part of Western culture, end of time speculations, namely apocalypse scenarios, are largely originated in biblical ending scenarios and have always appealed to and intrigued the scholars in a wide range of fields, including the literati. These apocalypse and post-apocalypse scenarios have found a dominating place in literature as part of ecocriticism, which in general terms, puts nature and the themes focusing on ecology in the focal point. Covering dystopian, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives as genres, ecocriticism includes a broad range of literary and artistic studies and critical theories that emphasize nature and environment relevant problems. Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014) is a distinctive example for dystopian and post-apocalyptic narratives describing the beginning of a global epidemic, Georgia Flu, and life twenty years after the catastrophe, because it both tries to explore man’s potential to create and sustain meaning through art, story and sharing in an ambitious and versatile way, and scrutinizes whether the ethical and cultural values still exist in a post-apocalyptic world, and the likely ways people live together, which is of the set of ideas suggested by post-apocalyptic literature. In this study, we argue that in Station Eleven (2014), Emily St. John Mandel considers art as an intrinsic need for humanity and the real survivor even after a probable apocalypse, and becomes a source of endurance against harsh realities of life, functioning like a home that shelters humans to which they escape.