Station Eleven

by

Emily St. John Mandel

Kirsten Raymonde Character Analysis

Kirsten is eight years old when the Georgia Flu strikes. A child actor, she witnesses the onstage death of Arthur Leander during a production of King Lear the night before the pandemic breaks out. The pandemic quickly kills her parents, and she then walks with her brother for the first horrible and chaotic year of the collapse. These events traumatize her and change her: she remembers nothing of the first year, and spends her free time after the collapse collecting tabloids in an attempt to remember Arthur and the world before the Flu. She is also constantly searching for any other copies of the “Dr. Eleven” comics, which she clings to as her most prized possessions. But the collapse does not change Kirsten’s profession or what she likes most about the world. After her brother also dies, Kirsten joins the Traveling Symphony, a theater troupe that travels among the small post-collapse settlements of the Great Lakes area and performs music and Shakespeare plays. The motto of the Symphony is extremely meaningful to her: “survival is insufficient.” She is thus a firm believer in the notion that humans, to be humans, must do more than just survive. For Kirsten, art is the best way to truly live instead of merely surviving. In the novel, Kirsten also wrestles with her fragmented memory of the old world, with the hope of civilization building back up, and with the terrors of the post-collapse world, a world of danger in which she has had to kill in order to survive even as she believes that survival alone is not enough.

Kirsten Raymonde Quotes in Station Eleven

The Station Eleven quotes below are all either spoken by Kirsten Raymonde or refer to Kirsten Raymonde. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Death and Survival Theme Icon
).
Chapter 8 Quotes

I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.

Related Characters: Dr. Eleven (speaker), Kirsten Raymonde, Miranda Carroll
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde
Page Number: 57
Explanation and Analysis:

All three caravans of the Traveling Symphony are labeled as such, THE TRAVELING SYMPHONY lettered in white on both sides, but the lead caravan carries an additional line of text: Because survival is insufficient.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Some towns … want to talk about what happened, about the past. Other towns, discussion of the past is discouraged. We went to a place once where the children didn't know the world had ever been different, although you'd think all the rusted-out automobiles and telephones wires would give them a clue.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde (speaker), François Diallo
Page Number: 115
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

"If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there's nothing that you cannot justify. There's nothing you can't survive, because there's nothing that you will not do."

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde (speaker), Tyler Leander / The Prophet, August
Page Number: 138
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

I can't remember the year we spent on the road, and I think that means I can't remember the worst of it. But my point is, doesn't it seem to you that the people who have the hardest time in this—this current era, whatever you want to call it, the world after the Georgia Flu—doesn't it seem like the people who struggle the most with it are the people who remember the old world clearly?

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde (speaker), François Diallo
Page Number: 195
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

“Well, it's nice that at least the celebrity gossip survived.'"

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde (speaker), August
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 45 Quotes

When it came down to it, François had realized, all of the Symphony's stories were the same, in two variations. Everyone else died, I walked, I found the Symphony. Or, I was very young when it happened, I was born after it happened, I have no memories or few memories of any other way of living, and I have been walking all my life.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde, François Diallo
Page Number: 266
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 50 Quotes

She had once met an old man up near Kincardine who'd sworn that the murdered follow their killers to the grave, and she was thinking of this as they walked, the idea of dragging souls across the landscape like cans on a string. The way the archer had smiled, just at the end.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde
Page Number: 297
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 51 Quotes

She stepped back. “It isn't possible,” she said.
“But there it is. Look again.”
In the distance, pinpricks of light arranged into a grid. There, plainly visible on the side of a hill some miles distant: a town, or a village, whose streets were lit up with electricity.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde, Clark Thompson
Page Number: 311
Explanation and Analysis:
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Kirsten Raymonde Quotes in Station Eleven

The Station Eleven quotes below are all either spoken by Kirsten Raymonde or refer to Kirsten Raymonde. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Death and Survival Theme Icon
).
Chapter 8 Quotes

I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.

Related Characters: Dr. Eleven (speaker), Kirsten Raymonde, Miranda Carroll
Page Number: 42
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde
Page Number: 57
Explanation and Analysis:

All three caravans of the Traveling Symphony are labeled as such, THE TRAVELING SYMPHONY lettered in white on both sides, but the lead caravan carries an additional line of text: Because survival is insufficient.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Some towns … want to talk about what happened, about the past. Other towns, discussion of the past is discouraged. We went to a place once where the children didn't know the world had ever been different, although you'd think all the rusted-out automobiles and telephones wires would give them a clue.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde (speaker), François Diallo
Page Number: 115
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

"If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there's nothing that you cannot justify. There's nothing you can't survive, because there's nothing that you will not do."

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde (speaker), Tyler Leander / The Prophet, August
Page Number: 138
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

I can't remember the year we spent on the road, and I think that means I can't remember the worst of it. But my point is, doesn't it seem to you that the people who have the hardest time in this—this current era, whatever you want to call it, the world after the Georgia Flu—doesn't it seem like the people who struggle the most with it are the people who remember the old world clearly?

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde (speaker), François Diallo
Page Number: 195
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

“Well, it's nice that at least the celebrity gossip survived.'"

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde (speaker), August
Related Symbols: Books
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 45 Quotes

When it came down to it, François had realized, all of the Symphony's stories were the same, in two variations. Everyone else died, I walked, I found the Symphony. Or, I was very young when it happened, I was born after it happened, I have no memories or few memories of any other way of living, and I have been walking all my life.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde, François Diallo
Page Number: 266
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 50 Quotes

She had once met an old man up near Kincardine who'd sworn that the murdered follow their killers to the grave, and she was thinking of this as they walked, the idea of dragging souls across the landscape like cans on a string. The way the archer had smiled, just at the end.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde
Page Number: 297
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 51 Quotes

She stepped back. “It isn't possible,” she said.
“But there it is. Look again.”
In the distance, pinpricks of light arranged into a grid. There, plainly visible on the side of a hill some miles distant: a town, or a village, whose streets were lit up with electricity.

Related Characters: Kirsten Raymonde, Clark Thompson
Page Number: 311
Explanation and Analysis: