Class Blog

For this week, I decided to create a network graph for First Semester by Rachel B. Glaser and John Maradik.

 

The story follows Sarah’s first semester in college. She is a premed student who has to go through the hardships of fitting in and adjusting to this new chapter in her life. The graph indicates a connection everytime Sarah has an interaction with someone. Throughout the story, she interacts with multiple groups of people such as her premed friends, her family, her friend Georgie, and more.

The story takes some interesting turns, and if I were to redo this chart, I would probably add weights to the links by making them heavier or making the nodes bigger by number of interactions. While Sarah’s node is the biggest, it is due to the number of interactions she has had as a whole, not by individual.

She has had significantly more interactions with Georgie, Colin, and David, but this can’t be seen through the graph. In addition to this, some of the narrative was unclear. An example of this was Georgie’s friend at the party. Was this the person that Georgie was holding hands with, or was it someone new? These things would be helpful when constructing a graph.

For this assignment, I chose to explore the short story Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins from Granta Magazine’s 136^th edition Legacies of Love, which was published on July 13 of 2016.

The story is set in 1963 and is about interracial romantic relationships. It focuses on these two roommates living on the Upper West Side—one ‘white’ and the other ‘negro’—who were in love with people of another race. It is told from the perspective of the ‘negro’ girl named Cheryl, but in the third-person narrative with the exception of several bracketed sections, which reveal her thoughts in the first-person narrative. Cheryl was 21 years old and the only ‘negro’ in her graduating class. She was in love with a ‘white’ freedom rider named Alan. Her ‘white’ roommate was named Charlotte and 22 years old. She had just graduated from Sarah Lawrence. She was in love with an Umbra poet named Henry. Cheryl and Alan had considered getting married, but Cheryl’s father couldn’t understand their relationship because of how much he had fought and struggled for freedom. Alan’s parents also disapproved of their love and forbad him from marrying her, which resulted in the end of their relationship.

The characters in the story include the two roommates Charlotte and Cheryl, Henry, Alan, Cheryl’s parents, Alan’s parents, the ‘negro’ heroin addict named Skip, Charlotte’s friends Adrienne and Derek, the Father of the Movement, Mrs. Drexel who was Cheryl’s old librarian, the ‘negro’ photographer, the ‘white’ women from the prayer vigil, and the ‘negro’ women en route to Itta Bena. A connection is formed between these characters through an interaction or the sharing of a space.

The network graph consists of circles representing each character from the story. It centers around the main character and forms a line between the characters who formed a connection. When a circle representing one of the characters is clicked on, his or her connections are bolded. The circles are of different sizes, depending on the number of connections that each character had, which was very interesting. However, I thought it would make more sense to differ the sizes of the circles according to the character’s involvement and significance in the story. For example, since the story is primarily about Cheryl and her relationship with Alan, the circle that represents Alan should be made larger to bring more emphasis to their connection. Another limitation about the graph is that viewers can’t tell what type of interaction occurred or how strong each connection was. For example, the interaction between Cheryl and the photographer was very minimal and one-sided because they merely shared the same space and Cheryl spotted him heading towards a pawnshop.

This week I decided to examine a short story called First Semester by Rachel B. Glaser and John Maradik, found within Granta 136: Legacies of Love online. The method of analysis I chose to use was a network visualization.

This short story predominantly focuses on the perspective of the main character Sarah who has just recently started her freshmen semester of college and describes her initial experiences as she grows throughout the semester. It follows her pursuits through her various relationships with other students often angled in terms of her sexual development throughout the semester and how that also affects her mental state as well.

In order to examine this story I broke out my network visualization by looking at any direct interaction of a relevant character vital to the current scene as a guideline for my edge list. Examining the visualization, it points out how Sarah is the predominant main character in terms of interactions with others throughout the various scenes of the story. It also points out how there is somewhat of a social group/circle among Sarah, David, Colin, and The Pip (The opposite worlds girl).

The visualization does lack however in identifying how weak or strong a connection between characters might be. It doesn’t include a weighting system to distinguish relationships that are weak, for example Sarah’s brief conversation with the petworld employee, versus a stronger bond like Sarah’s relationship between herself and David. If I were to fix this issue for a further iteration of the network graph I would try to establish a weighting system that used the number of scenes that two characters interacted within to distinguish between the various spectrum of relationship strength.

This week I looked at the “One More Last Stand” short story by Callan Wink. For this blog post I did a network analysis on the connection between characters, namely their interaction in the short story. This network graph illuminates immediately that Perry is a vital character in the story, and objectively one may figure out that he is the main character. He has communication lines with each person, and two people (Kat Realbird and the bartender) have direct communication to two other people.  The graph has directional points, where you can see the communication originating from Perry, Kat Realbird, and the Bartender to the receiver. 

 

However there are limitations of this network analysis, specifically the inability to show the quality and nature of each relationship and conversation. We only know from this network analysis that Perry has spoken to Kat Realbird, the Twins, Andy, Ted, and the Bartender. The viewer does not know how many times they have spoken, and thus do not know the extent of each relationship. Perry speaks to Kat and Andy many times in the short story, but even for these two the nature of their relationship is different. I’m sure with more complicated network analysis tools one could better capture the relationships.

Another limitation is the connection between the characters aside from Perry. John Realbird and Kat Realbird are brothers and sisters, and John Realbird is the bartender’s cousin. This particular network analysis does not show the other relationships, and limits the other connections to the fact that Kat Realbird had spoken to her grandmother or the bartender had spoken to John Realbird. We can see, however, that if Perry wanted to reach John Realbird he has a connection to him through the bartender. This is not the only way to reach John Realbird, but it is one possibility because of the vast network of communication Perry has had.

Overall this was a fun activity to do a simply network analysis exercise. I can definitely see how a more complicated network analysis could show a lot more information and connections between nodes!

I chose to analyze the short story, Self-Made Man, by Mark Gevisser. This story traces the changes in attitudes towards gender-nonconforming children. It focuses on the story of Liam, an adopted child from China who was born female, but began living as a boy at the age of thirteen. At the age of 18, Liam took a big step into his gender transition process. The story brings in numerous characters with varying degrees of influence and support for Liam.

The story also traces the history of the gender transition process, detailing different attitudes in Western Europe versus in America and depicting changing perspectives from the medical community. It details opposing and supporting attitudes and ties Liam’s experiences, as well as the author’s own experiences with gender-nonconforming behavior.

I made my edge list by first listing out all the main characters in the story in relation to Liam. I then assigned each character a number from 1 to 5 based on their relationship with Liam. 1 means directly influenced, such as Liam’s parents. 2 means supportive but less influence, for example Liam’s doctor. 3 means acquaintance, referring to Liam’s acquaintances at school. 4 means affiliated public supporter, referring to a LGBTQ supporter. 5 means unaffiliated public supporter, such as Barack Obama. After creating my first fusion table, I inflated these 5 numbers, stretching them out from 0 to 200 to create a more pronounced difference in the actual network graph.

Creating the fusion table, I was able to illuminate the wide network of supporters in Liam’s life and map out the level of influence. It shows how intertwined all of these stories are and how Liam was able to interact with so many characters. For example, Liam’s 2 mothers were assigned the number 1 for being direct supporters and influencers of his transition. However, the subsequent fusion table was limited in that I could not distinguish whether the influence was positive or negative. I gave Liam’s mother, Beth’s first partner a 1 as well, but the support from this character was negative.

Varying degrees of support were also not depicted in this network data visualization. For example, Beth’s father become more supportive of Liam over time, but this detail is not depicted in his assigned number of 2.

Follow the link here.

For this week’s blog post, I read the short story, “Some Other Katherine,” by Sam Byers. The story is told in third person about a British thirty-year-old woman named Katherine who maintains casual relationships with men and expects very little in return.  Her main male companion is Keith, who has outside relationships, but only ever mentions Janice, a blond he went to Tenerife with, leading to Katherine’s jealousy.  The network graph, in not allowing color, is frustrating in this case.  Though Keith is a prominent character throughout the story, we can’t denote that because he has merely two connections, one to Katherine and one to Janice. It puts him on par with the stripper, Clover, whom Katherine interacted with once, or Brian, whom Katherine only slept with for a short time and is hardly mentioned in comparison to Keith.

Debbie, Carol, Dawn, and Jules are all coworkers of Katherine’s, as are Keith, Brian, and Mike.  While the ladies are all connected as a work friendship, Katherine has slept with all of the men, but Mike had a problem with her relationship with Brian and was unaware of her relations with Keith, hence no relationship between them. Because many of them were not directly stated as being aware of each other or having relations, I did not mark a connection.

 

This week I read a story titled “Scavengers” and visualized the network among the characters in the story. Told in a first-person narrative, the story is about an American tourist in North Korea investigating the true identities of a wrestler named Ryokdosan who had been celebrated as a national hero by North Koreans after Ryokdosan’s death on 8 December 1963. However, according to the source, the narrative found more reliable, Ryokdosan was a wrestler born in 1924 in some place which only became territory of North Korea after the war. His whole career was based in the Japanese-occupied Korea and in the US and he did not care about being patriotic for North Korea. His accidental death was also not political at all. The story reveals how distorted the North Korean propaganda could be.

With Google Fusion Tables, I am able to create a graph of important characters’ network as below. I define the “connection” is constituted by any interaction between characters or mentioning of one character by another. I focus on major characters so minor characters and collective characters are dismissed in the visualization because minor characters are only functional while the relationships related to collective characters were not specific enough. Another reason could be network among the collective characters could be symptomized by that of the major characters.

 

I first found this network graph illuminates the temporality about the characters’ connections. The graph shows clearly the stories had two storylines cored by the narrator and Ryokdosan respectively. Apparently the narrator’s story points to present. He stayed in the hotel North Korea prepared for foreigners after 1995. One rice wine bottle emblazoned with the Japanese pro wrestler Rikidōzan, known as Ryokdosan in North Korea in a gift shop triggered his interest in knowing more about this historical figure. Then he did his own research on Ryokdosan later. Then there came Ryokdosan’s story line that covered his whole life from 1920s-1960s. Within this story there is another story in 1995 when North Korea reinforced the story of Ryokdosan by inviting American wrestlers to fight against Ryokdosan’s protégé. Three different focal characters show how the characters establish their relations and how a false historical narrative built over the time.

Then I could see how the international connections could happen through the interactions of characters. The major characters travelled around the countries and seemingly they did as they pleased. However, North Korea, Japan and the US were the three nationwide forces dominating people’s activities in the stories. Characters’ actions are all built within the historical contexts manifested by the regulations and by international politics. At the same time, it is difficult to define which nationality Ryokdosan identified himself with even though in the plots both Japanese and Korean believe he should be exclusively Japanese or Korean. Ryokdosan connected all the three groups of people coming from those countries.

The graph is also helpful in addressing other questions like how people of different social hierarchies built influences and how knowledge and ideologies were transmitted throw traveling and narrating. It highlights the hidden relationship behind the elusive prose narrative. However, it cannot replace the narrative because of its highly reductive nature. The graph does not show motivations, temporal changes or character development. We need more supplimentary information like the original texts or critical works in order to understand this graph in a more profound way.

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.  

For my blog post for Week 8, I decided to read the short story “Lessons” by Justin Torres. This story centers on the life of a hardworking multi-cultural family. The characters include the father, paps, and the mother, Ma, and their three sons, Joel, Manny, and the Narrator whose name is never explicitly stated. The story provides background on their life and how the boys ran around their home and provided two detailed scenes to show how the family lives. The first scene is the three little boys dancing with their father as he prepared dinner, and the other shows a family outing to a swimming hole and how Ma and the Narrator do not know how to swim. There are not many characters in the short story and the lack of an abundance of scenes provides limited interaction, but direct interaction between characters can be tracked to an extent.

The network data visualization that I created for this short story displays the direct interactions between members of the family. I chose to use “direct interactions” rather than characters speaking to each other because there is a lot of very important non-verbal communication between characters in the two main scenes.

This network can be used to identify the interactions between characters. Using this network, a viewer can make many assumptions as to what these interactions represent. This is because this network is very limited in the sense that it portrays a list of binary interactions by answering the question of whether two characters interacted. Nothing of deeper meaning can be extrapolated from this data without making large speculations. Some assumptions that could be made from this data is that Paps and Ma interact with the Narrator more because he is younger, because he needs to be disciplined more, because he needs to be taught, or simply because the story is told from his point-of-view.

Another pitfall of this data visualization is the fact that it is representing interactions between individuals when the short story wasn’t about characters interacting. The main point of this story was to provide a glimpse of the life of this family and how their history has influenced how they live on a day-to-day basis. While networks can be useful tools, they primarily just provide a more visually pleasing way to answer a binary question. I do not believe that the utilization of network graphs is the best way to represent data found in a short stories.

For this week’s blog post, I decided to look at the story “Kashmir’s Forever Wars” by Basharat Peer. This story looks at the India-Pakistan War in Kashmir and the impact it has had on families in Kashmir. The narrator travels throughout the region and meets with families who have had family members join the militants. The narrator specifically explores the motivations and reasons behind people joining the militants and how it has impacted the communities in which they lived.

I chose to make a network graph with edges between characters who appear in the same scene. This network graph helps illuminate several interesting things. Not surprisingly, the narrator is the central character of the story connecting all the other characters. This graph also illuminates which groups of characters tend to interact with one another. Just by looking at this network graph, someone who has not read the story could still make inferences about which characters might belong to the same family or community.

While this graph allows one to make basic inferences about the story and the interactions between characters, many important aspects of the story are not represented by the graph. For example, since this graph is not weighted, it treats every interaction between characters to have occurred only in one scene. However, the reality is that several characters interacted multiple times throughout the story. This graph is limited in that it does not express the strength of relationship between characters. Furthermore, one should be careful to not judge the importance of characters based off of this graph. There are a few characters that appear in the fringes of this graph, but in reality are actually driving forces to this story.

Another thing lacking from this graph is a distinction between the nature of the characters. Given the backdrop of a war and storyline of Kashmir being a war torn state, most people can be categorized based on which side of the war they believe. This story is also about reconciling those differences and about people who made surprising choices of which side they identified with, despite their family’s beliefs. This graph could better show the conflict of the story by coloring the nodes of each character based on the side with which that character identified with. This would further highlight to the reader the different sides present in one family or community, and would drive home the author’s point more directly.