Station Eleven Summary and Analysis

Section Five Summary Toronto

This section introduces another timeline moment; seven years before the collapse, Jeevan interviews Arthur. That Jeevan took an unflattering picture of Miranda years ago is his secret; he hopes his admiration for Arthur’s acting and new role as a journalist will make up for it. During the interview, Arthur offers Jeevan exclusive information if he will keep it quiet for 24 hours. He explains that he is leaving Elizabeth, who just had his son, to marry his new co-star Lydia Marks.

Seven years later, after Arthur’s death onstage, Jeevan is at his brother Frank’s apartment listening to news of the flu decimating the world, remembering and being proud that he kept his word. This section details the timeline of the collapse; over the next 58 days, Jeevan and Frank remain hidden with their supplies as newscasters disappear, electricity blinks out, cars run out of gas, and water stops running.

Intersecting with Jeevan’s description of the collapse are more excerpts of Kirsten’s interview, with the plot jumping back and forth between Jeevan’s experience of watching civilization collapse and Kirsten’s vague memories of the same time. She affirms again that she does not remember much before or immediately after the collapse. She references the man who tried to save Arthur, and the Librarian says no one ever knew who it was. She and the Librarian ruminate on whether it is worse to know what’s been lost or not to remember it at all.

In Jeevan’s timeline, Frank makes the decision to kill himself to give Jeevan a better chance of survival. After Frank dies, Jeevan leaves the apartment and starts to walk, facing the reality of the collapse for the first time. He briefly meets up with a few other travelers, but then he sets out on his own.

Section Five Analysis Toronto

The themes of survival and civilization weave through this section, as the characters witness or remember the shift from pre- to post-collapse. They discuss fame, immortality, and survival. The very context of these discussions—Arthur’s sudden death on stage, Frank’s choice to live and die on his own terms, Kirsten’s survival—inform the conversations with additional gravitas. The intersections among all the characters also continue to deepen, as chance and fate bring them into contact.

Frank’s comment that he has already lived through a war zone and has no interest in doing so again highlights that survival is to some extent a matter of choice as well as luck or fate. Frank also pushes Jeevan to realize how much of civilization requires humanity; even on a farm, he points out, Jeevan will not know what to grow, how to water it without irrigation, or how to harvest it without gasoline or electricity.

Even among all the references to survival, this section also touches on the need for art. Kirsten talks about the paperweight, an object of no earthly use but that she finds beautiful. And Frank, before he dies, shares the words of the actor-philanthropist whose book he is ghostwriting, who states that actors want to be seen and then they want to be remembered, to become immortal.