The 2014 novel Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel chronicles the lives of several characters before, during and after an apocalyptic pandemic that wipes out more than 99% of the world's population. The novel jumps between three time periods: the pre-collapse world, the initial collapse following the Georgian flu, and the new world that has emerged twenty years later. The story is told from the perspective of five point of view characters, all loosely connected through their varying levels of closeness to Arthur Oleander, a famous actor whose death on the eve of the Georgian flu opens the novel. Among them is Jeevan, a paramedic in training who performs CPR on Arthur as he dies before receiving early news of the pandemic and quarantining himself with his disabled brother; Kirsten, a former child actor who belongs to a travelling Shakespeare troupe and symphony in the post-collapse world; and Clark, an old friend of Arthur’s who after being stranded during the initial flu outbreak, is forced to build a new life in the Severn City Airport. While truly compelling, the novel is somewhat lacking in disability representation and touches on some harmful tropes. On the whole however, I think it presents a realistic and compelling vision of a post-apocalyptic North America and what happens to disabled people in the apocalypse.
The single biggest issue I have with Station Eleven is the dearth of disabled characters. None of our point of view characters are disabled, and in the entire 333 page novel there is only one named disabled character—Jeevan’s brother Frank. While I do really like Frank’s character and find him to be well-written and realistically portrayed, his positive representation is somewhat undercut by the fact that he dies by suicide shortly after the initial collapse. In fact, no disabled characters survive the initial collapse, which feels both realistic and unimaginative (surely some disabilities could be survivable in the apocalypse).
Despite the lack of disabled characters, Station Eleven presents a fascinating opportunity to ask: what happens to disabled people in the apocalypse? Put simply, according to this novel, they die. First, they die of the initial outbreak—in the Georgian flu those in hospitals and other medical centres are the first to die—then they die as the result of societal collapse, without access to pharmaceuticals, health-care or other support. In the immediate aftermath of the flu, survival depends on an individual's ability to isolate completely from other human beings, to live without pharmaceuticals or electricity, to hunt and gather food and often to travel long distances without a vehicle on unmaintained roads. It’s reasonable to assume that many disabled people would be unable to survive in these conditions. In the course of the novel we learn of multiple people who die without access to insulin, or antibiotics, or who are unable to traverse the new landscape.1 Unfortunately, In the ten years since Station Eleven was published, we have accumulated a great deal of evidence that disabled people are disproportionately impacted by pandemics and their resultant societal changes. The vast majority of people who have died of Covid-19 were disabled, and the toll of the pandemic continues to weigh particularly heavily on the disabled community.2
In addition to dying largely unpreventable deaths, disabled characters in Station Eleven also die disproportionately of suicide. Jeevan’s brother Frank, and an unnamed young woman who is stranded at the airport with Clark are the only two disabled people we encounter in the initial collapse, and they both die by suicide.
The disabled character we spend the most time with is Jeevan’s brother Frank. Frank is a writer and journalist who sustained a spinal cord injury while covering the war in Afghanistan and now uses a wheelchair.3 After getting early warning about the Georgian Flu, Jeevan stocks up on supplies and quarantines with his brother in his Toronto apartment, allowing them to survive completely isolated for the initial months of the pandemic. During this time Frank is much more pessimistic than Jeevan about their chances of survival or rescue, and seems to come to terms with the reality of their situation fairly quickly.4 While Jeevan daydreams about a military rescue and a sudden return to normalcy, Frank is stoically resigned and expresses doubt that either of them will survive.5 When they start to run out of supplies and it becomes evident that they will soon have to leave the apartment and travel to find a new way of life, Jeevan begins to realise how difficult it will be to travel with Frank under these conditions. When Jeevan proposes leaving to Frank, Frank expresses doubt about their ability to survive and insists that he doesn’t want to try:
“After I was shot, when they told me I wouldn’t walk again and I was lying in the hospital, I spent a lot of time thinking about civilization. What it means and what I value in it. I remember thinking that I never wanted to see a war zone again, as long as I live. I still don’t.’
‘There’s still a world out there,’ Jeevan said [...]
‘I think there’s just survival out there, Jeevan. I think you should go out there and try to survive’
‘I can’t leave you.’
‘I’ll leave first,’ Frank said. ‘I’ve given this some thought.”6
Shortly after this exchange, Frank overdoses on sleeping pills and dies. Jeevan is then free to leave the city on foot.7
Frank is a very well written and compelling character, and his suicide makes sense in the context of the text. That being said, it’s problematic and disappointing that the only named disabled character commits suicide, especially given that his suicide serves to further the story and survival of a non-disabled main character. And Frank is not the only disabled character to meet this fate. A teenager trapped in the airport at the beginning of the pandemic, known only as “the girl who needed Effexor”, dies by suicide after running out of her antidepressants.8 Despite being realistic and well justified by the text, these suicides reinforce problematic tropes.9 When a disabled character dies by suicide—particularly when they have communicated their intention to loved ones who don’t try to stop them (as is the case for Frank)—it implies that death is preferable to a disabled life. Perhaps in the apocalypse, when quality of life or even a reasonable chance for survival is unavailable to disabled people, this conclusion could be said to make sense, but why then do none of our nondisabled characters, many of whom are also experiencing immense suffering and slim chances at survival consider suicide? It suggests that there is something about disabled life that makes it less worth living. It’s disappointing that Mandel failed to consider not only the possibility that disabled people could survive the apocalypse, but even that they would want to.
One way to understand Station Eleven’s issues with disability representation is to implement “the Fries Test”. Proposed by Kenny Fries and partly inspired by the Bechdel test, the Fries Test is a series of simple yes or no questions that can be asked about a text in order to determine a baseline for acceptable disability representation:
“Does a work have more than one disabled character? Do the disabled characters have their own narrative purpose other than the education and profit of a nondisabled character? Is the character’s disability not eradicated either by curing or killing?”10
Unfortunately, Station Eleven does not pass this test. Although the work does have more than one disabled character, those characters don’t really have their own narrative purpose—Frank’s narrative serves primarily to further Jeevan’s story—and most of them die.
Despite failing the Fries Test, Mandel does have some interesting things to say about disability in the apocalypse; namely, that as the world changes, so does the nature of disability. In the new world, conditions that used to be regarded as minor inconveniences become serious disabilities. For example, we meet one character, “the sixth guitar”, who becomes “nearly blind” after losing his glasses.11 In the old world, the need for prescription lenses was relatively easy to accommodate and thus many vision impairments were not considered disabling, but in a world without access to even rudimentary optometry, these impairments are disabilities. Similarly, conditions that used to be life-long disabilities in the old world become a death sentence post-collapse. This shift highlights the reality that disability is in many ways socially constructed. Depending on the social context, the same impairment can have dramatically different meanings and impacts.
This social construction is again made apparent as the new world begins to take shape. Twenty years after the initial collapse, humanity has begun to rebuild, forming a new social structure made up of small communities centred on communal living. As these communities solidify and learn, it becomes increasingly possible for them to support disabled members who may not be able to contribute as much to the labour of survival. For example, the seventh guitar’s “eyesight was so bad he couldn’t do most of the routine tasks that had to be done”12, and yet he is a member of the symphony and receives equal access to their shared resources. Similarly, in his old age, Clark is permitted to forgo the chores of survival in his community and find other ways to contribute that are more suited to his skills and abilities.13 This new world presents a hopeful vision of humanity's capacity for mutual support and valuing of disabled lives.
Overall, Station Eleven is a compelling and surprisingly hopeful vision of a post-apocalyptic North America. I really enjoyed my time with this novel and I think it has a lot of compelling things to say about humanity, and our relationships to art and to each other. My only real complaint is with the disability representation. The fact that there is only one named disabled character in the entire novel is disappointing, and it’s only made worse by the fact that he dies by suicide. I think a disabled point of view character—or just more disabled characters period—could have really improved the novel and made Mandel’s themes of human interdependence and the value of art in the face of disaster even more poignant.
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“Bury your Disabled” Tvtropes.org
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