“Jubilee,” a short story written by Carys Davies published in Granta 119: Britain Online Fiction, is a poignant tale that is set at (what is supposed to be) a joyous and special celebration attended by British royalty. The story begins with the thoughts of Arthur Pritt, an alderman, who feels sorry for Her Majesty The Queen because of the tediousness of the day. He notes that she looks bored and miserable and he wishes that the jubilee celebration had something different and more interesting than the usual proceedings, such as fireworks, acrobats, or magicians. These present thoughts are intertwined with sad memories from Arthur’s personal life with Alice, his ex-wife. Eventually, Arthur whispers in The Queen’s ear his name and the fact that he is sorry for the boring day and what she has to sit through. The Queen reacts by asking Arthur to tell her a story, at the dismay of the Prince of Wales who she waves to halt his protest as he wants The Queen to pay attention. Arthur continues to tell The Queen a story about his personal life, in which he caught his wife in bed with her piano teacher-turned-lover, Elizabeth Gordon. The Queen is enthralled by the story, reacts accordingly, and then goes back about her business. Arthur goes back to his empty house.
I made an edge list of explicit characters in the story (whose name and/or title was explicitly mentioned in the story) and defined a connection as who they had had in-person scenes/interactions with. Below is a screenshot of my edge list in Excel.
I saved that Excel document as a CSV and uploaded it into Google Fusion Tables to create the network char. Here is my network graph of “Jubilee.” Below is a screenshot, as I couldn’t figure out how to embed the interactive graph itself (only the html code would show up).
This network graph illuminates which characters had direct connections with each other. It shows that Arthur Pritt was the central connector within this short story, as he bridged individuals of his personal life with those on-scene at the Jubilee. However, the graph does not tell you the nature of these relationships between characters. It doesn’t tell youIt does not tell you how Arthur bridged the two worlds together–by telling the personal anecdote of his unfortunate misgivings to the Queen at the celebration. The chart lacks the size of role each character played in the story, as The Queen played a more central role but whose node is the same size as the minor characters of Mrs. Maudesely and the Prince of Wales who didn’t have any dialogue in the piece. The most difficult part of creating this graph was choosing how to define the connections between the nodes. I feel like I could have found a different method of categorization/connection that might have allowed for a different network graph that made more sense and was more illuminating.