Project 2: A new experience in distant reading
When I first heard about this project I had no clue on what to do because I did not understand on how in the world I was supposed to be able to write a post on something I have never read before. I thought it was crazy but further talk into the project I began to develop an idea on how I would go about writing this project. To start off, like everyone else, I created a word cloud and began looking at the most used words through out the book and finding certain word clouds that began to fit my style. So it almost felt as if the words belonged to me. It is an interesting way of looking at things when doing a distant reading. But before I go on I would like to state that this is very new experience for me and was a little bit fun because there is so much freedom on how to distant read that I could use my imagination on to what I thought exactly what things mean.
After I created a word cloud I noticed certain words that happened within the text. For example, the word “Mr” appears 5,661 times as well as “Pickwick” appearing 2,117 times. With this I can infer that Mr. Pickwick is a very important character throughout the entire novel which comes as no alarm. I believe Pickwick appears because of the Title, Pickwick Papers, and with that I can guess how important Mr. Pickwick really is. Another example of what I can infer about this novel is its use of formality. As you can see in the picture in this post many words like “Mr”, gentleman, “Sir”, “O'” all appear quite frequently. These words makes me wonder why the novel was written in such a formal approach. Was it perhaps because Mr. Pickwick comes from a wealthy family and is always in a formal setting and recognized in that matter? Or perhaps are they, the characters, in London where formal words are always spoken? There are many reasons on why this novel could be formal without actually reading it but my best guess would be that Charles Dickens chose to write in this manner to give the characters a source of elegance as well as wealth. Besides formality I can also see is the importance of certain characters. Such characters as “Weller”, “Sam”, and “Pickwick” and looking into the word cloud one can suggest that Mr. Pickwick is an older fellow based upon the amount of times that the word “old” appears. Or I could suggest that time is very valuable within this novel. Especially near the end of the book is when the word “time” appears at its greatest. I feel that time is coming to end near the end which means a very climatic scene is happening. Perhaps Mr. Pickwick is running out of time and is on his death bed? These however are only guesses and could only be found out by reading the novel.
Looking further into the distant reading and the word cloud I began to look at the words that are small but have made it into the word cloud and I find these very peculiar. For example, what in the world could be the significance of “door”? Why would door make it to the top of importance with its appearance of 358 times with it increasing the amount of times said at the very end of the novel? Or another word such as “inquired” was mentioned 329 times and especially in the end of the novel where it increased the most. Why would these words appear so often that they have a significance within the novel? A door is a door correct? Or is it something more such as a metaphorical door as in “a new door is opening in your life”? Perhaps the reason why the word “inquired” appears so often is that the characters are great in communication and always are asking for permission. This reverts back to the suggestion of formality within the novel. Are they so formal that they must always ask for permission? Maybe this was Dickens intent. I have never personally read a Charles Dickens novel, yes I am missing out and intend to read one at some point in my life, but I feel that what I have heard about him that he has a writing style of accents and formal tradition. It is with this and looking at the word cloud that I can suggest that the book is about Mr. Pickwick, if that is his name, and he is only his fairly old and he is coming up with papers, perhaps for his will, I don’t know, however near the end he is on his death bed and time becomes a major factor in whether or not he achieves his goal.
This has been a very interesting assignment and took me a little longer than I thought it would. It also required a very long thought process on what exactly I thought some words meant. I feel a lot of this assignment was just guessing and predicting. This process almost reminds of my science classes that I had to take. Like we stated in class, science is hypothesis and standard experimentation. And like this assignment we made guesses towards the novel and why some words are there and what some may mean and like science this was our experiment. However, I would not say this was a failed experiment. It taught me that close reading is very valuable and when you close read you can make deductions. Where as with distant reading we need to be making inductions which not very many people do anymore. Distant reading is a very valuable skill and has helped me in the fact that I need to further into my novels and such and really look into what the author and characters are trying to do. I am very accustomed to close reading and it is with that that I prefer close reading because I am able to look at the entire text and grasp a story and image in my mind. Distant reading is the complete opposite and was a brand new, exciting, experience for me.