For my week 8 blog post I decided to look at the short story called Exotics by Callan Wink within the American Wild Granta magazine.
This fusion table shows the protagonist James Colson, and his degree of connection to each of the supporting characters. I created the nodes to represent each character and the edges connect a relationship between each of the characters for how they are associated with James Colson.
The story begins with James talking to Molly Hanchet, one of his 6th grade students who wished him a good summer. Then James continues to his mistress Carina who is a teacher for troubled girls where he vents about his ex-girlfriend leaving him and taking her belongings. Carina had faced trouble at work where one of her students Ellen Realbird had committed suicide that day by cutting her wrists. James, upset with his current love life left where he arrives at his brother Casey’s and has multiple interactions with him and his wife Linda, whom he met through his brother. After his reflection period at his brother and sister-in-laws he takes a summer job as a rancher and is employed by a farmer named Karl.
The network graph does portray how he knows each of the other characters, and who he met them through or heard about second hand. The limitation with this visual is it does not show the depth of strength of the relationship or the label on each of the connections between the characters. The graph also does not explain the complexity behind the characters and the internal struggle of each relationship and how they met one another. The graph illuminates that the relationships are all equal, but some are simply acquaintances, some are family members and some are people he has just heard about through another connection; the visual does not explain how much he likes, dislikes, etc. each of the other characters.