This week I looked at "Chapter 17" of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and, again, used Voyant in order to generate themes for the chapter and hopefully gain a richer understanding of the text. This time I was much more impressed with the this program in regard to its ability to highlight one major theme: "shall man consent?" Without a brief understanding of "Chapter 17," one may not see the significance of this thematic question.
"Chapter 17" is a conversation between Victor and the Monster in which the Monster asks Victor to "create a female for [him], with whom [he] can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for [his] being." Victor, after conversation with the Monster and a promise from him to leave Europe, finally consents to do so in order to rid the "neighborhood of man" of the Monster, but the chapter focuses on the conversation between the two and Victor's eventual consent to create a new female for the Monster.
Cirrus
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My analysis of "Chapter 17" began, as it usually does with Voyant, looking at the word cloud that it generated in order to try to visualize any themes that stand out. The terms "shall," "man," and "consent" immediately jumped out at me. So I decided to dive deeper and see how/if Voyant could expand upon these terms.
Terms Ratio
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Using the Terms Ratio tool, I was again able to see "shall man consent," throughout four of the five segments of text analyzed. It struck me as curious, though, that none of these terms appeared at the end, so after looking into the actual text, I was able to see that Victor, by the end of the chapter, had finally consented to build the Monster a female companion. This visualization of the text was incredibly accurate in the way it displayed this major theme. I figured I was on a roll here, so I wanted to see what other visualization tools could potentially add more layers to this analysis.
Trends
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Using the trends visualization tool, these terms again appeared regularly until the last segment, again displaying the agreement that Victor has made with the Monster toward the end of the chapter. These words disappear due to Victor's (man) and his eventual acceptance of the Monster's request (consent). Shall man consent? Eventually he would.
Scatterplot
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I decided to use the scatterplot tool to visualize the chapter as well, and although the major theme was noticeable again ("shall man consent"), other terms began to pop out as well. Terms like "bestow" and "existence" appear, although not as frequently, enough to warrant some investigation. These terms add a richer understanding to the text in that they seem to ask a new question: "shall man bestow existence?" This can be seen as both a question within the text and a question of morality: should man be granted the power to bestow existence on a non-living creature?
Correlations
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The last visualization that I used was correlations. The terms that popped out here, and the ones with a positive correlation" all seem to describe the ways that Victor felt when talking to the Monster. He had "feelings," was "moved," and was eventually "sympathetic" to the Monster's plight. I really like the correlation charts, and they seem to be able to pull out deeper, more hidden thematic material.
Overall, I think that as I play with Voyant more and more, I am able to gain a better understanding of the DH tool and find it more an more useful.
