Station Eleven Paper

The Butterfly Effect

One butterfly effect theory states that if a butterfly flaps its wings, it can cause a tornado to form in other countries on a different continent. Another one states, if you travel back in time and you kill what seems to a small, insignificant, useless butterfly, causes your original time to change completely. In both theories, the smallest, tiniest of things had gigantic consequences. The novel, Station Eleven, has many small things evolve into these major headaches for its characters.

In the section, The Theater (3-32), Emily St. John Mandel starts to describe the Georgia Flu. The Georgia Flu started in the state of Georgia, USA. It has the symptoms of the regular flu, like coughing and fever, but within 24 hours of showing symptoms, you're dead. Within the next hours after the pandemic arrives, the hospitals start filling up with patients , the doctors and nurses that were supposed to help stop the flu started to get sick themselves, freeways, roads, parkways, streets, back roads, etc., start to get backed up with cars that people left and the ones that ran out of gas as people tried to get out of the city, hoping they could out run this speedy and lethal virus that is rapidly crossing the globe leaving red and darkness in its massive wake. Cities all over the world became ghost towns, the power stops flowing, gas became extinct, businesses closed for the last time, and ninety-nine percent of the world's human population lied dead where they stood. The last percent of humanity lay on the fringes of extinction, but they know "survival is insufficient." (58). Their world had been destroyed and was like they had traveled back through time to the late sixteenth century, in Shakespeare's time, where the world was plagued with blinding darkness and the suffocating air, stricken with thousands of deaths. Thus, after this little bug started, it grew and spread, creating quite a sequela.

After the end of the world, what few people survived it, banded in little communities across the lands. One of these bands is the Traveling Symphony, a group of actors, actresses, and musicians that travel across Michigan, playing orchestra pieces and acting Shakespeare. However, when they came to St. Deborah by the water, in section A Midsummer Night's Dream (35-67), they thought it was going to be the same as it was two years ago when they came through and could find their friends and their new baby that they left when they moved onto the next stop on their tour. That was their first mistake, starting a chain that leads them into a pit of quicksand. In the two years, everything has changed. Everyone's afraid and a new man is in charge. They quickly leave the new St. Deborah by the water with one more thing then they came with, a young teen named Eleanor. Even though the Symphony usually doesn't get involved in other groups' business, this was an extreme circumstance, she was promised to the new man in charge, the Prophet. As a result of this simple trip to St. Deborah by the water, the Symphony starts the consecution that leads to their major headache.

Before becoming the Prophet, young Tyler Leander survived his parent's divorce and a move to Israel. In his mother's custody, the thought of everything happening for a reason and many more religious sayings were reinforced into his head, which just seemed like simple learning of the Bible, at the time. After his father died of a heart attack in Toronto and his and his mother's plane gets grounded in Severn city, the irreversible damage started to peek through his shy and quiet exterior. Starting with the simple repetition of his mother telling him to dementedly reading the book Revelations to a plane of people who died of the flu. The next step closer to the deep end was when Tyler and his mom, Elizabeth, left Severn city airport with a religious bang group. After that step off into the deep end, Tyler and his followers, the Light, wandered the East Coast and a little of the Midwest, spreading their religion. They used people's weakness and fear to get what they wanted, often using children and spouses. Even though he was a teacher of Christianity, he manipulated it along with added elements from the last thing his father gave him, two editions of a comic book name Dr. Eleven, to his own advantages and schemes. He violates many of the main Christian principles, including: Polygamy (married to many or adultery), thou shalt not kill, and thou shalt not steal. But when the Symphony came and left with his future wife, he began hunting for blood. He and a few selected followers started after the Symphony. When they caught up to them, they kidnapped three of the members, to trade for his child bride. After a few complications, he's willing to do anything to get his bride back, even cold-blooded murder. When he catches up with one of the actresses of the Traveling Symphony, Kirsten Raymonde, who had killed one of his men and saved one of his captives, he wants revenge and an example, he aims his rifle between her eyes and bang. One of his followers shot him dead along with all the others, including himself. But, this tale of woe could have never come to be, if Tyler's father, Arthur Leander, had taken better care of himself and then he wouldn't have died from a heart attack; he would have gone to Israel liked he planned to and Tyler would have had something tethering him to the ground. Thus, Tyler's demise, his consequence, was started by the small steps of Arthur Leander, "Father like son."

Subsequently, Arthur Leander was the cause of Tyler and Kirsten's adversity. When Arthur left Delano Island for Toronto and began taking acting classes started it all. He wanted to get away from a place where everyone knew him, but he also wanted to be famous. Starting as a little-known actor, he meets Miranda Carroll, a niece of one of his mom's friends. The next time they meet, he's more famous and she's a damsel in distress. After three or so years, Arthur's infidelity comes out and they're filing for a divorce. He marries his mistress, Elizabeth Colton, and has a son, Tyler. After that, he divorces Elizabeth for his new mistress and co-star, Lydia Marks. He tries to go back to what his life was like when he began in Toronto, before the cheating, the divorces, the partying, the drugs, the acting, the fame, the arrogance, the lost friendships; he moves back to Toronto and joins a production of King Lear, where he meets Tanya, a worker at the Elgin Theatre and mostly watched after the child actors/actresses, and Kirsten Raymonde, a young child actress playing in King Lear as one of King Lear's daughters. Before the debut of King Lear, Arthur ask Miranda to come and see him, because he wanted to warn her about a book, Dear V", was coming out and to apologise for dragging her through the world he wanted, in return she gives him two sets of two copies of her comic book Dr. Eleven. Hours before he went on stage he calls his son, who was in Israel at the time, to see if he got his package, one set of the Dr. Eleven comics, and told him he would see him soon. Also, he gave the other set to his friend and co-actress, Kirsten Raymonde. In his giving mood, he told Tanya that he was going to pay off her forty-seven thousand dollar student loan. He barely made it through the first show, but by the near end of the second performance, his chest felt weighed, his balance and judgment were off, his mind was jumbled, then his heart went from skipping to stopped. Ergo, his accumulative small failures affected the small things in the lives of, and not limited to, Kirsten and Tyler.

The novel, Station Eleven, has numerous moments where small things have large consequences. Like the Butterfly Effect, the characters of Station Eleven are stepped on butterflies. The little bug, the Georgia flu, spread like wildfire, the simple trip to St. Deborah by the water that turned into a manhunt, the young boy that turned into a homicidal cult leader, and the young man who ruined his life for a dream gone haywire. Considering the end of many characters in Station Eleven, one should think and rethink what they are about to do and especially learn from others mistakes.

Work cited

Mandel, Emily St. John. Station Eleven: A Novel. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

"Butterfly Effect." Urban Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2016.