Eight Trains depicts a man’s regular Tuesday journey to-and-from work in rural Japan and the various people he encounters. The story is told completely from his perspective: he leaves for work at 6:12 AM, takes 4 different trains to get to work, spends 5 or so hours at work, then takes the same 4 trains back home till he finally arrives at his house at 8:05 PM where he drinks coffee and smokes cigarettes. We don’t know much about the narrator, but we learn a few of his quirks and mannerisms as he lets us inside of his personal thoughts and introspections on the seemingly faceless people he comes across.
I had wanted to create a two-tiered system of nodes that had the narrator centered in the middle, with different nodes for the different locations extending outward from the center, and then different nodes for different characters extending outward from each location. But I couldn’t figure out how to do that on Google Fusion Tables, so I instead made two graphs to represent the same information.
The graph above illustrates the different locations that the narrator frequents every Tuesday, including the 8 trains, his work, his home, and the Moka station platform. This graph clearly represents the story’s point of view: the narrator (and the reader) is on the inside, looking out at the world from different directions, taking different paths to get to each place. Train 1 and 2 have bigger nodes to represent more characters noticed and discussed at each location. However, this graph conceals the fact that train 1&8, 2&7, 3&6, and 4&5 are actually the same exact train but moving in opposite directions, and that each pair (more or less) has the same passengers on it.
The graph above displays the different characters that the narrator sees during his day at all 10 different locations. While the previous graph could not depict that certain trains had the same passengers on it, this graph clearly can, seen in the connection between the vain schoolgirls on train 2 and 6, and the homeless man at the Moka station platform and in the narrator’s home.
While both graphs display the narrator’s whereabouts and the people situated around him, neither are able to convey his emotional environment (meant here to mean the ways in which he feels at each location due to the people that surround him). This limitation is a significant one because his changing sentiments throughout the day is the entire point of his story. For example, as he leaves work and moves toward his first train back home (and his fifth train of the day), he thinks “Returning is always sad […] To go is always to go somewhere; returning, you return to nowhere. That’s the way it is.” But his increasing boredom and lack of fascination by the strangers cannot be felt by looking at these nodes. Therefore, the graphs fail to illuminate the narrator’s true connections to the people around him.
I also chose this short story, but it is interesting to see how you make your argument on the network graph. I didn’t really talk about the fact that the trains leaving and returning are more or less the same, as you have shown in your graph. I do agree that the graph is limited in expressing the narrator’s sentiment and the significance of the connections to the people.
I really like your initial idea for the two-tiered network graph – I know it can be frustrating to envision something but not yet know how to execute it. I think the network graphs you came up with are very interesting as well. In theory, the network graph seems ideal for representing the numerous and fleeting connections that the narrator makes during his commute(s). Yet as you mention, the story is deep not in its number of characters but rather in the narrator’s reactions to these characters. It is very difficult to convey anything qualitative about these relationships through a network graph (even the use of weight seems quantitative). In some ways, a network graph is sort of like a summary of a story – it shows you what happened in the story, but in different, more condensed language. While the network graph certainly helps readers to understand some elements of the story that might escape them otherwise, other parts of the story’s meaning inevitably become lost in this kind of visualization.
I really like the two tiered graph system, it would be super cool if you could have integrated the two but I also don’t know how you would have done that. After reading the blunt descriptions of the characters encountered, it intrigues me making me want to know more about the narrators thoughts and descriptions of each these characters. This kind of reminds of a “girl on a train”-esque story and the mindless interactions, until something differentiates them to create an interesting narrative.
I did my project on the same short story, and I like your new point of view. I especially like your analysis of the emotional environment that cannot be conveyed in the network graph; I talked about a similar thing in which he becomes more bored and anxious to go home as the day progresses. I also like the fact that you made a network graph for each train, connecting to each person.
I didn’t read this story, but in reading your post and understanding your visualizations I was able to get a sense of the characters and the plot well. I appreciated your acknowledgement that the emotional journey of the narrator was lost in the graphing. I also wonder what it would like to try and include affective data as well. Could colors be added to the certain trips, indicating emotion? Could the graphs be made into a structure that also catalogues mood? Seeing these creative solutions in the context of this story in particular would be interesting.
I find it interesting how your graph depicts relationships between characters that are seemingly insignificant – hence the superficial descriptions replacing the unknown names – but have all encountered and affected one another in some way. It reminds me of everyday encounters in real life, how we learn about ourselves/others through introspective thoughts about strangers.