Summer Fusion Table

I read the short story Summer by Molly Antopol. It was an extremely short narrative about the narrator’s grandfather, and his personal issues following his life after war. While there were not many characters in the story, I decided to do a fusion table graph for this story.

These nodes were connected through the familial bond between the characters. For example, the mother, family, grandfather, and narrator are all in one cluster because they are, by definition, family. On the other hand, secondary characters, such as the teenagers and peasants, are connected together on a separate cluster, as they supplement the story, rather than add to the dynamic of the narrator’s grandfather.

The network graph illuminates the emotional proximity of the family members, as the mother seems more disconnected from the narrator, and the narrator seems mots comfortable being around his or her grandfather. Similarly, the father is connected to the grandfather, but this is due to their arguments with one another that cause them to connect. The connection between the secondary characters is also shown in the second cluster; while these characters are not connected by a familial bond, they all share the same characteristics in that they exist to better describe the narrator’s grandfather’s anger and post-traumatic stress disorder issues.

There are limitations to this graph; by just looking at it, it would be difficult to deduce that the family is not as close as the fusion table represents. The father and grandfather argue a lot, and this would not be evident in the table. Overall, it would be difficult to deduce any context behind the table. There would need to be more information about the connections between these nodes to better understand the table.