Who are the great men?

For this assignment, I was curious to see how the six terms “Master”, “Time”, “Slaves”, “People”, “Great”, and “Man” relate to each other in the texts. I’m especially interested in the term “Great”.

Bubbles

Looking at Bubblelines reminded me of sound waves, this visualization allows you to see when and how frequently (or loudly) a term is used. The loudest is 1837-ball, using “Master” the most in the beginning and middle of the text, then using “Man” and “Time” more than “Master” at the end. What is this text telling us? Does the narrator believe the Master is no longer as great as people or other men?

1895-bruce, 1897-hughes, and 1908-hatcher are also louder narratives, however, they spoke loudly not about “masters” but about “people” and “men”. Just by looking at the colors associated with each term, we see the term “master” is used occasionally at first, then completely missing throughout the text. We especially see this in 1908-hatcher, who only mentions “master” a handful of times while terms “great”, “people”, and “man” are more frequently used together.

Mandala

While bubblelines shows us the frequency (loudness) of terms, the mandala shows us the relationship between terms and documents. Looking at the same terms, “Slaves” is not used in the same texts as “Master” and “Time”. However, where “Slaves” is missing it is replaced by “People” and “Man”.

Loom

Loom also looks at frequency of terms. As we can see in this visualization, “Master” is the most frequently used term, while “Great” is the least used word. The frequency of “Master” is replaced by “People” and “Man”.

All of these visualization tell us that at first “Master” is the most used word, then it is quickly replaced by “People” and “Man”. This shows us a change in perspective.