Reading Journal for Station Eleven/Utopia

 

My perfect community would be called the Safe Zone. It would be run under a democracy still and would look like a perfectly clean and beautiful city with no litter, crime or any type of negative correlation that would put the city in a bad light. The main problems we would eliminate from society would be "cancel culture", people not being able to have freedom of their own opinion and just overall rudeness. The way we would do this is whenever someone ever has a bone to pick with someone else, they would have to go to a type of court where the person at question's actions would be judged on whether or not they actually did something wrong or not. If they did, they would have to publicly apologize to the person they wronged and to the whole city. If they didn't do anything wrong, the accuser would have to be the one to apologize to them and the whole city. Our community would grow by constantly eliminating crime, anger and overall evil from the world through the making of new rules and a kind, yet stern law enforcement. 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

"It isn't possible to continue to listen to this, so she sets the receiver gently on the cradle and finds herself wondering why she didn't notice earlier- say eight years ago, when they first started dating- that Pablo is mean." This quote is just realistic because a lot of people get into relationships without realizing that the person they are in love with is a not a very nice person to begin with. That's why so many relationships don't end well because people don't realize what they're getting into.

"He is becoming extremely, unpleasantly famous. He wasn't expecting fame, although he secretly longed for it in his twenties just like everyone else, and now that he has it, he's not sure what to do with it. It's mostly embarrassing." This is also another realistic quote because we all want fame and riches. It's something that seems like the key to the true key to happiness. But once people get it, it seems that they've done everything in life now and that there's nothing more to life anymore. 

I think this story does have a lot in common with a play because it's very Shakespearian in a way. "The survival is insufficient" quote works well because it implies that surviving isn't enough in this world. Since most pathways to happiness are eliminated in this society now, it's hard for people to thrive. 

Twenty years after the breakout of the Georgian Flu, society has been demolished. But the Traveling Symphony has been created and they dedicate themselves to keeping the fragments of humanity and arts and music alive. 

I feel like the Prophet is very poetic in the way he speaks, along with using very intelligent vocabulary. He has a very interesting view on people's death of the Georgian Flu and claims he saw his mother die twice. 

Arthur is a much more complex character than I thought he was going to be. He's immensely rich and famous but he finds it unpleasant and embarrassing. He also has dated a lot of women, but his agent thinks it's all a strategy when in reality Arthur actually dated those women because he legitimately cared for them. He also seems to be legitimately interested in Miranda, who is currently trapped in a toxic relationship with her boyfriend, Pablo.