For the blog post this week I read the short story The Martians Claim Canada by Margaret Atwood. This short story narrated a tale of three Martians that descend the Earth to watch a musical. However, with a mess up of directions, they instead land in Canada. Due to their resemblance to mushrooms, they are able to ask a mushroom for directions to the mushroom. Their conversation then leads to the mushroom giving them a history lesson on the formation of the land they are on, Canada. The mushroom tells the story through an obscure narration that to the reader covers the themes of colonization, war, and control. The story ends in a just as obscure ending as the mushrooms decide the best thing to do is the take over Canada and create their own musical.
Using Google fusion tables, I created a network of nodes that linked together the characters of the story. These characters included the relationship between the Martians and the mushroom, and then the French and English people of the mushroom’s story. Although this was a simple story with only a few characters, the node map still is able to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of this form of visual through simple charts and more complex ones. One strength of a network map is how it provides a simple visualization of the connections in a story. For example, we can see that the Martians and the mushrooms are all connected because they spoke to each other in the story. In more complex situations, a network map could show how characters could be tied together with every other character or be tied to only a few other characters. A network map like other charts still has its flaws. For one, in a network map, there is no explanation why these characters may be tied together or the strength of closeness these characters are related. This network map could also potentially get very messy with the number of connections there are in longer stories. Overall the network map has the potential to create an engaging visualization for many different stories and circumstances. By connecting a network map with some explanations and other charts, this visual could serve a strong purpose in any story or digital humanities project.
Hi! The short story you read sounds interesting. I like how you pointed out that your network map doesn’t show an explanation on why these characters may be tied together or their strength of closeness, and that it could get very messy in longer stories. Your story was actually longer than the one I did my blog post on, and I could see that your network map visualizes relationships clearly. Overall, great job!
This short story sounds interesting! Your network map does a really good job of clearly displaying the relationship between the characters! I agree that network maps like these are difficult to provide context on how close each character was to the next, as the only text on the network map are the name of the characters.
Hi Sophia,
Good job on your blog post! Like you, I also analyzed “Martians Claim Canada” and thought it was very interesting. I really like how you included the connection between English Flag People and French Flag People. That is something I did not think about and think it’s really cool that you did. Great job!