For Week 8 Blogpost, I analyzed the short story titled “Seven People with the Same Name and Their Discreet Moments” authored by Han Yujoo and translated from the Korean by Erica Chung. As the title of the short story suggests, this is a melancholic narration of seven people with the same name and a peek into their everyday life and vulnerable moment. I really enjoy this short story none only for its melancholic and pensive tone but also for its delicately crafted characters.
At first, it appears that the seven stories are seven independent storylines, however; upon close examination, subtle connection can be found between storyline 1, 6 and 7. The old lady is storyline 1 is actually the narrator of storyline 7 and also the missing old lady with dementia in storyline 6. Also notably in storyline 5, the narrator mentioned about reading blogs of other people with the same name online. However, I can’t be sure that these bloggers are the narrators of any storyline.
Press here to see the network analysis.
Overall, in my opinion, one hidden theme connects all the storylines. The “I” in each storyline portrays dissatisfaction towards life, hopelessness and emptiness. Their life seems to be mundane, unsurprising, boring and uninteresting. Narrator 2’s helplessness in fighting back, the screamers in storyline 1, the missed opportunity in storyline 5 – all point to the hidden vulnerability of everyday human life. That’s why I connect all the storyline with a single node “Unsatisfied Life”.
Your network is laid out very cleanly which I admire. It is easy to read. It is also hard to connect characters across 7 different story lines but you were able to be creative and look at concepts as well as shared experiences between characters and form connections that way. This is commendable and also the fact that you were clear on assumptions you made as a graph maker in creating this graph makes any bias which could be criticized as such, transparent.
I hope you didn’t choose the story because of the cover picture: that’s what I did and I regretted right away because the story had a more complex structure than the others. However, I think you’ve done a good job! I like how you set “unsatisfied life” as the center of the network. It is creative to set the underlying theme, rather than a character, as the center that connects all the nodes.
This sounds like an interesting short story–makes me want to take a peek into the story myself! It’s interesting how you connected each node with the other by connecting the narrators of each story together. I also liked how they all share the same central node of an unsatisfied life, which is an interesting method of tying all of the characters together.