Blog Post 7 – “Seven People with the Same Name and their Discrete Moments”

The story that I chose to read is “Seven People with the Same Name and their Discrete Moments” by Han Yujoo, translated by Erica Chung. This story includes seven individual narrations told by seven different narrators with the same name. The name of which each of the narrators share is implied to be a very common name. Reflectively the stories of each of the narrators describe discrete, but very common, everyday moments of each their lives. Each of the stories is told in a very melancholic and nostalgic tone, generally highlighting everyday difficulties normal people face.

When I chose to read this story to create a network graph, I did not know that this story contains seven discrete narrations. When I did realize the disjointed nature of the story, I initially thought that it would not make sense to represent the story’s characters in one network graph since there are seven separate stories. However, I soon realized although the narrations are of discrete moments, there are several brief interactions between a few of the narrators. Here is the network graph that I created. The network graph was capable of illuminating the connections between the narrators and characters when they had physical interactions in the stories.

In the special case of this story, I feel like a network graph does not meaningfully illuminate the characters’ connections. A network graph is limited to visualizing the physical or apparent connections of characters such as, when they appear together in a scene or speak with each other. However, it is not capable of presenting the “non-visual” connections between characters. In this story, each of the characters, who share the same name, also share very common reflective attitudes towards their surroundings and seem to live a very lonely life and have ongoing struggles in their own way. For instance, Narrator 5 is not presented in the network graph at all because Narrator 5 does not interact in any other characters in the story. However, the Narrator’s pensive attitudes and melancholy toward his everyday life is very much similar to the nature of those of the other narrators.

To finish off, I thought this story was very unique and interesting, even though these is not a typical story plot. Each of the narrations convey very meaningful messages to life.