Discussion Board Four: Blog Journal for Station Eleven
“Jeevan was crushed by a sudden certainty that this was it, that this illness Hua was describing was going to be the divide between a before and an after, a line drawn through his life”(Mandel 19).
This passage surprised me because I understood what Jeevan meant when he said the line of life before and after, it was like life before the COVID-19 pandemic and after it—the sudden shift the world goes through is like something you've never experienced until it happens, like Jeevan said in the beginning about being crushed by a sudden certainty. Every person who lived through the coronavirus pandemic can fully describe what life was for them before, during, and now after the pandemic. Jeevan mentioned the division of time and it really is like a line in our lives that just all of a sudden split the moment in history.
“In response, there was only a muffled sound. Hua was coughing. “‘Are you sick ?’” Jeevan was pushing the cart towards the door. “‘Good night, Jeevan’”(Mandel 22).
After reading this passage I could tell Hua and Jeevan were best friends because Hua took the time out of his extremely overwhelming and life-threatening job just to warn Jeevan about what was going on. At the same time, he was consistently telling Jeevan to leave because he knew how bad it was and was about to get, while also most likely knowing he wasn't going to make it out of that hospital shift alive. That takes such bravery and strength to hide your emotions like that and I really admire Hua for being able to stay so calm while knowing he was going to die. As he said the words “goodnight, Jeevan”, he really meant goodbye and if I were Jeevan at that moment I don't know what I would've done knowing my best friend just said his last goodbye while telling me to live.
When Jeevan receives the series of phone calls from Hua, he realizes that his life will be divided by a “before and after.” In what ways was your life also impacted by the Covid pandemic? Had this pandemic been as bad as the Georgian Flu described in the novel, what do you think you would have missed most from your old life?
My life has never been so severely impacted as it was when the coronavirus hit. From the distance learning, wearing masks all the time, not seeing people for months on end, losing contact with people, forgetting how to interact face to face and the constant fear of getting COVID really took over and altered the way I now go about life. Before the pandemic I didn't have to worry about staying six feet away from people, I didn't have to carry around a mask and hand sanitizer everywhere, and I could go about my everyday life without a worry in the world. But, when the virus hit, all of that disappeared. Now, after the pandemic, I will never see a mask without having anxiety, being sick is now a fear of mine because anything could happen, I also never take the time I spend with my friends and family for granted because you never know what could happen.
What have we begun to learn about Arthur since his death through other characters? Discuss the foreshadowing in this line: “This was during the final month of the era when it was possible to press a series of buttons on a telephone and speak with someone on the far side of the earth.”
We learned about a woman who had a relationship with Arthur named Miranda and she received a call from Clark he told her the terrible news about Arthur. She was heartbroken, especially after the fact she felt so alone in Malaysia. The quote above foreshadows how extreme and severe the Georgian flu will be and I think it's going to get so bad that the world shuts down because everyone is either dead, sick, or hiding from the flu. Everyone will be too scared to catch it and the world will become corrupt.
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