I chose Haruki Murakami’s short story “The Seventh Man,” which poignantly recalls a tragic childhood accident. It beautifully deals with selfishness, fear, guilt, and catharsis, so despite the somber subject matter, it was an enjoyable read! I’ve always wanted to check out Kafka on the Shore or Norwegian Wood, so this is a great introduction to Murakami’s writing.
I decided to build a network graph of explicit character interactions. Because so many of these figures are friends and family with one another, a “who-knows-who” diagram would not be useful.
Interestingly, while the story deals with the narrator’s relationship with his childhood friend K, the visualization makes him out to be a minor character. K’s explicit interactions are with the dog and narrator only, even though his life touches many others.
This discrepancy shows that we need to be careful when making judgments from visualizations and graphs. There may be hidden biases and misrepresentations that can cloud the truth.