Can I Just Use Voyant to Read a Chapter?

Do I Have to Read a Text?

For this week's response, I focused on "Chapter 37: The Winding-up" of the novel Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte. I used Voyant again in order to see what the tool would reveal in terms of themes and insights into the text.

The final chapter in Shirley recounts what happened to the main characters, especially Louis, Robert, Shirley, and Caroline, and ends with both couples happily being married. But what does the text reveal to an audience that has not yet read the text? Before I read the last chapter, I uploaded the text to Voyant. Nothing stood out too much, but the tool did reveal some things that could be of use to an unread audience.

Similes

Noted in an earlier analysis of this text, Charlotte Bronte's Shirley is filled with the use of "like," revealing her abundant use of similes. Although not every use of "like" denotes a metaphor, it is obvious that Bronte thrived on similes in order to describe to her audience in accurate detail the events, emotions, and/or objects throughout the plot. Knowing this before reading the text may help an audience anticipate this poetic language and adequately and accurately know how to interpret the novel and its literary devices.

The Use of the Future Tense Auxiliary Verb "Shall"

The use of the word "shall" twenty-one times within the chapter revealed one major point: the chapter would look toward the future a lot. I believe revealing this to an unread audience would also add something to their prior understanding of the text. The reasons for this in the final chapter are relatively simple: this is the last chapter, and the audience wants to know what will happen with Caroline and Robert. After reading, the audience sees that Robert has a future to look forward to after all, and he and Caroline can finally be together. Their conversation is full of future promises and hopes, so the use of "shall" seems to be important in terms of understanding at least one important theme of the chapter.

Plot Map for Common the Five Most Common Words

One thing that I have really enjoyed within Voyant has been the Trends Charts. These charts help to reveal major aspects of the plot at various segments throughout the text, all in a linear order. As you can see, "shall" was used dominantly in the 9th segment of the chapter, the segment when Robert and Caroline were discussing their future. This, again, can help an unread audience understand or a potential audience investigate a text before delving into it. It can help reveal a structure of the text and, in turn, lead to a richer understanding of the text when it is read.

Also, we can see how the plot shifts throughout the chapter by looking at these key words. "Caroline," "day," and "shall" all wax and wane throughout the chart, showing that at times the focus shifts. Going into the text, the audience sees that Caroline is discussed very early, then the plot does shift to the day at hand (Louis and Shirley's wedding), and then the plot shifts between Caroline and the future, touching once more upon the day later on. If someone reading this text was familiar with the previous material of the novel, and simply used this tool to try to get a brief understanding of the text, I think we could reasonably infer that the audience would be able to assume or guess that this chapter would include Caroline's future in some form, maybe even her marriage. They could also assume that this chapter would focus on a single day/event.

I do believe that Voyant is a useful tool for doing analysis like this, but it does take some playing with to get used to using the various tools within Voyant. However, I do not necessarily think this tool can "do the reading for you." It can help interpret the text and, at times, pull out important themes and plot arcs, but without knowledge of the text, I think it would be difficult to use reliably and effectively.