For Monday: Mandel, Station Eleven, Chs.20-26

 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: In Chapter 24, Kirsten recalls the tuba player saying “The thing with the new owrld...is it’s just horrifically short on elegance” (151). What do you think he means by “elegance,” and why might this be an important (and overlooked) aspect of life? How does the Symphony offer a way for audiences to experience the elegance lacking in their own lives?

Q2: In the chapter about Arthur’s letters (and elsewhere), we learn about his early years, long before he became famous and many decades before the Georgian Flu. Why does Mandel take us back this far? What does Arthur’s early life have to do with the experiences of Kirsten and the Symphony? Why is his life important?

Q3: Dahlia, the lady Clark is helping with his corporate coaching, tells him that “the corporate world’s full of ghosts. And actually, let me revise that...a fairer way of putting this would be to say that childhood’s full of ghosts” (163). What does she mean by this, and how does it relate to the men and women in corporate America, according to her? Why does “childhood” haunt them? And what does this have to do with their work?

Q4: In a conversation between August and Kirsten, he says to her, “You ever think about [not traveling]? There’s got to be a steadier life than this?” to which she responds, “Sure, but in what other life would I get to perform Shakespeare?” (135). Since she was actually in a Shakespeare play before the pandemic, why does this life allow her to perform Shakespeare? Why does she think the end of the world gave her the freedom to act for a living?