I read the short story “The Man at the River” by Dave Eggers, from the Granta Travel edition. The story is narrated in 3rd person and focuses on an American Man who bikes with his Sudanese friend to a river in Sudan. At the River the American decides not to cross for fear of getting an infection from the water, while the Sudanese Man crosses. A friend of the Sudanese Man (Fecond Friend) comes to the river prompted by the Sudanese Man to get the American Man to cross the river. After a long conversation the second friend enlists the help of a Fisherman on the river to use his canoe to help the American Man to cross. This is the network graph I created using google fusion tables:
I took the names for each of the nodes from the character names from in the story. The edges between each character are defined by who speaks to one another in the story. The most central node is the Second Friend because he has the most in-degree and out-degree connections, because he speaks to every character in the story. The colors of the nodes indicate nationality: Blue = American and Yellow = Sudanese. I added the color coding to the nodes because nationality plays a big role in the relationships between each of the characters.
Although there are only four characters in this short story, I thought this would be an interesting story to create a network graph for because through this story one can analyze the limitations of network graphs. Each character in the story has a very complex relationship with one another, that is influenced by cultural, linguistic, and political factors that are hard to convey through a network graph. I chose to define the edges in the network graph by which characters have conversations, because the conversations are a critical part of the story. However, I think in order to more fully understand the nature of the relationships in this story one would have to create multiple network graphs, or multiple edges between nodes that illustrate different types of connections. Even still there would be aspects of characters’ relationships that would be hard to convey through a network graph. For example, in this story there is a relationship between the Fisherman and the American Man because the Fisherman takes the American Man across the river in his own canoe, while he wades across the river in the water. This exchange between the two of them during the crossing that cannot easily be illustrated on network graph showing all four characters, because they do not speak to one another, nor do they know one another. And if it could be shown the cultural, linguistic, and political factors that influence and frame their exchange could not be illustrated on the graph.