This week, I read The Beauty and the Bat by Diane Williams, a beautiful short story about a woman’s one interaction with the “Lady with Cake.” The author does not give her a name or give context in the interaction that she has with this woman. Her friend Rae and Rae’s daughter, Maud, are also in the scene. Diane’s son makes a brief appearance in the scene and very short interaction with the “Lady with Cake.” From the network graph I made with Google Fusion Tables of the interactions (who spoke to who in the scene), it shows that the Lady with Cake is at the center of the “action” and speaks to most of the characters that were introduced in the story.
Every character, Diane, Rae, Maud and Diane’s son, interacts and speaks to Lady with Cake (as shown below: the orange lines indicate the outward direction of the interaction i.e. The Lady with Cake speaks to all characters).
The arrows show the direction and number of interactions with the other characters in the story. In this case, Rae, Diane and Lady with Cake have the most interactions. Diane speaking to Lady with Cake directly the most, which makes sense since Diane is the narrator of the story and describes her interactions with this mysterious and not so nice woman.
To people that have not read the story, the network graph can illuminate the importance of the characters (the ones that are spoken to or revolved around the most). The story is centered around Lady with Cake from Diane’s point of view. You can also see which characters speak the most and who/how many people they have spoken to. The interactions you see are limited because it is from the perspective of Diane (the narrator). Where she is, limits who you can “see” speaks to who. It limits what the ready can see happen beyond the immediate kitchen area where this story takes place. The network graph is also limited in showing the exact amount of interactions that these characters have with one another.
I really liked how you didn’t just stop at one network graph, but you continued to analyze the story and characters and created multiple versions with each showing a different characteristic or relationship. The characters were consistent between each graph, but the relationship between them varied, showing the depth to this story. But as you said, there were some limitations to graphs.