An Abstract of a Paper that will Never be Written

 

Nostalgia for Things Past: Exploring the Significance of Memory in the Post-Apocalyptic World of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven

Abstract:

Memory is deployed ingeniously by Emily St. John Mandel in her novel Station Eleven (2014) to weave a narrative that oscillates between two worlds that is divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’ by the calamitous Georgia-flu pandemic. This paper will explore how the author categorizes the pandemic survivors’ memory into the binaries of nostalgia and imagination. Besides analyzing how the categorization of the survivors’ memory aids them in coping with the trauma of losing a way of life that can never be recreated or recaptured. Despite being divided into different categories, the act of nostalgia and imagination are in fact, quite similar. Nostalgia tricks the memory in creating images of the past that are only partially true. Hence, both nostalgia and imagination ‘invents’ a mellowed version of the past that enables the apocalypse survivors to cope with the utter desolation of the present. However, the essential message of the novel, which is reiterated time and again “Survival is insufficient,” implies that a nostalgic attachment with the past will trap the survivors in an inescapable state of limbo thereby reducing them to biological entities bereft of hopes, who merely exist. Whereas imagination, which also plays a significant role in ‘Dr. Eleven’, the comic book that forms the metafictional framework of Station Eleven; enables the survivors to escape their traumatic past, and thus facilitates them in rewriting the script of their post-apocalyptic lives. The act of imagining allows the survivors to incorporate their remembered past into the blueprint of their future post-apocalyptic lives, thereby imbuing them with a sense of hope and optimism that would have been missing from the nostalgic confinement of the past.

P.S. I wrote this paper with lots of hope because this novel is very close to my heart and I enjoyed working on it. But since I am going through a rejection/failure streak, in which all my hopes are being dashed, thus this paper also got rejected by the journal. I was going to delete the PDF file of this paper because I don't want to clutter my computer with debris of my failure, but then I thought of uploading the paper here on my blog because deep down I didn't want to let go of the thing for which I had worked so passionately, despite the innumerable failures and rejection that have now become a part of my life. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Female Angst: The Social Cost of Rape

Image
Rape, a word which shudders every conscientious human to their very core; a word which terrifies and disgusts us; a word which represents the blot of society and failure of humanity. Yet, unfortunately the word is thrust at our face every morning by the newspaper headlines. Hence, it is foolish to desist from a word which so menacingly dominates our daily discourse. Therefore it becomes imperative that we sensitize the prevailing narratives concerning rape rather than naively categorizing the word as an unutterable taboo. Rape, though undoubtedly the most horrendous crime afflicting humanity, cannot simply be categorized through the binary division of black and white by relegating it into the abyss of the black. As the most insidious implications of rape acquire a grey shade by defying the binary opposition of white and black. This article aims to bring forth one such insidious implication of rape which operates so implicitly that it deludes an unobservant eye into believing it to
Read more

The Red Wine

Image
“Finally, the day has arrived” Andrew smugly mused. No, it isn’t his birthday; or perhaps by a contorted logic one can say that it is. After all, wasn’t this day destined to usher in a new phase in Andrew’s life? This day will bestow a new lease of life to him; hence, one is justified in calling it his birthday. The beeping of his phone pulled him out of his reverie. It was a message from Ajay, his office colleague. It read, “Congratulations!!! I want a grand party, no excuses shall be entertained. And don’t forget your hapless friend once you fly off to America.” Andrew smiled indulgently, evidently Ajay adored him. In fact almost all of his colleagues admired and adored him. Andrew’s charismatic personality, coupled with his good looks and pleasant disposition won him a great many friends and admirers. However, this deluge of admiration had deluded him into thinking that the world revolves around him. But in this case it wasn’t presumptuous of him to think that since last few da
Read more

The Motherhood Project: Introduction

Image
Hello, I am Sreya Mukherjee, a curious and paradoxical woman with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I have always wondered what my purpose on Earth might be because I firmly believe that I have been assigned a greater purpose that has to be fulfilled before I exhaust my limited time on earth. Then while writing a research paper for my post-grad course work, I had an epiphany which made me realize that I want to work on motherhood studies/maternal feminism (the paper that I was writing was on mother-daughter relationship in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale ). I am trying to get enrolled in a PhD program but even if my application doesn’t get selected by any of the universities I have decided that I will work as an independent researcher on maternal feminism, because this not only endows me with a sense of purpose but also, more importantly makes me feel happy and fulfilled.             Though feminism had always been especially close to my heart, yet I had never ventured in
Read more