Visualizing Eternity in Death

http://magic.piktochart.com/editor/piktochart/4938263#

 

I decided to use an online program called piktochart for visualizing data. It allowed me to investigate several different aspects of the word “go” throughout the narratives and the chronology bar. I observed the frequency of deaths, total death count, and locations of death through the first and last 20 pages of both Sam and Haileys narrative. Using this sample,  I first graphed the frequency the word “go” and “goes” in the chronology bars of both Hailey and Sam using voyant. I then pasted the results on piktochart. As you can see, the frequency of “go” and “goes” meaning the frequency of deaths increases dramatically as the novel progresses. I decided to visualize this in graphical form because of the easiness to understand the increasing frequency over time. This visualization serves to illustrate the significant pattern of death throughout the novel which is clearly displayed.

After I graphed the frequency of death over time, I decided to visualize the pages with the most deaths in the chronology bar. I did this by using the interactive pie charts and graph axis available through the online program. I made separate pie charts for the first 20 pages of Sam, the first 20 pages of Hailey, the last 20 pages of Sam, and the last 20 pages of Hailey(sort of). There were technical constraints on what I was allowed to do or show, so it may not make sense at first glance. The green pie charts are Sam and the gold pie charts are Hailey. (I keep this color scheme for the other graphs). If you observe carefully, you can see color coordinated pieces of the pie charts varying in size. Each slice represents a page in that sample of 20 pages.  The slices are varying in size and color indicating how many people died on that page in the chronology bar; the bigger the slice and the darker the color, the greater amount of people that died. I also made the size of the pie charts proportional in regards to the total number of deaths occurring in each 20 page sample indicated by the y-axis of the graph. The x-axis of the graph indicates the pages in the novel. Because I did the first and last 20 pages, I only have visualized data for the beginning and end of the novel. As you may notice, there is no pie chart for the last 20 pages at end of Hailey’s narrative. This is because no one dies in the chronology bar during her last 20 pages due to the future dates that have not occurred yet. Over 230,000 people die in the beginning of Sam’s chronology bar while just over 12,000 people die in the last 20 pages of both Sam and Hailey’s chronology bars. This data was interesting, but I think larger samples would be necessary to draw conclusions from this graph. I chose the colors and design so that the complex pieces constituting this graph could be ingested in one bite.

Lastly, I decided to make a map of the United States. On this map I have color coded states for Sam (green) and Hailey (gold). I designed this map to be similar to population “heat” maps. The darker the color of the state, the greater the population. In this case, the darker the state, the more people that died there in the chronology bar. If you go to the link provided at the beginning of the post, the map is interactive and will tell you how many people died, on what page numbers this occurred, and also what years. It was interesting that in my sample none of Sam’s chronological deaths occurred in the same place as Hailey’s. I would guess this probably changes in the middle of the book. This map roughly aligns with the destination map on Hayles website, which draws the question if the two are related. Other than this, the visualization serves the purpose of displaying death throughout a novel that when close-read can seem to focus more on life and eternity.

The most conclusive visualization I created was the frequency line graph. Because of that graph I was able to discover relationships between death and years. More deaths occurred in 1963 than any other year in my sample range. This is due to the shared 1963 date as the beginning of Hailey’s narrative and the end date of Sam’s narrative. It also led me to discover significant findings in the middle of the novel within the narratives. Specifically between pages 177-184. Here the word “go” (if viewed as meaning dying) changes the entire perspective of the conversation. This leads to new perspectives surrounding the deaths of Hailey and Sam and then the concept of their eternity starting again on page 1 after their deaths on page 360.