The Symbolism Of Station Eleven

A leitmotif originally was used in music as a particular musical phrase that was repeated, but in the literary context, it is a person, situation, or object that is a repeated theme. Leitmotif means “leading motif”, so it is an essential part of the story not only because it is repetitive. On page 104, the leitmotif would be Kirsten’s paperweight. At the beginning of the novel, the paperweight is given to Kirsten by Tanya as a form of comfort. It doesn’t seem to play any significance at the time until the reader learns about Kirsten and the Traveling Symphony, because Kirsten reveals she still has it. As the story progresses, the reader finds out that the paperweight was a gift from Clark to Miranda and Arthur, who has it prior to the collapse and gives it to Tanya.
These seemingly random connections show what
It is the size of Earth’s moon and requires no sun to function, but after damages during war it no longer has a sunrise and remains in perpetual dusk. There are people who crave the thought of returning home and they reside in the Undersea, or bunkers under the high sea levels, again due to the lack of sun. Station Eleven, both the comic and the place, is a highly effective leitmotif. As a place, we see humans forced to leave Earth due to otherworldly activities, but after leaving, all they want to go back. It reflects the situation of the characters in the novel, people like Dieter or August who remember what it was like before the collapse wish to return to that, so while they do still reside on Earth the version of Earth they live on is not the same giving them a sense of being somewhere foreign. Station Eleven shows this in a more extreme sense, because they literally leave Earth, but it gives a frame of reference that really emphasizes the emotions of both the people on Station Eleven and the Travelling Symphony, because they are paralleled in the