Predictions:
Dracula, written by Bram Stoker is a gothic horror novel. I was intrigued by this novel because supernatural creatures have always been interesting to me. The novel cover shows a picture of Dracula, which reinforces many vampire stereotypes. Some of these stereotypes include vampires being pale, thin,red-eyed, with black/grayish hair. There is also blood around Dracula’s mouth, which obviously represents a vampire’s blood-sucking habits. In the novel, I predict that there will be a lot of violence, gruesomeness, and deaths. I think that Dracula will be the cause of these horrors, and deaths. Additionally, the gates shown behind Dracula on the cover led me to believe Dracula lives inside a castle, which is where I believe many terrible things will happen.
I believe that there will be a lot of fear represented in this novel. I can assume that Dracula is the antagonist of the novel, based on the novel cover and my background knowledge of vampires. I believe that there will be a lot of fear presented in this novel, which will be the catalyst to many conflicts.
Fantastical shows and novels have always been appealing to me because I love learning about myths, legends, and supernatural creatures, like Dracula. Vampire Diaries is one of my favorite shows. There are many fantastical characters and experiences throughout the show. The legend of vampirism is something that has always been fascinating to me.
Text Visualizations:
- The first tool I used to visualize my text was a word cloud graph. This graph displayed the most commonly used words in the novel. One of the most frequent words used is “night.” Since the main character of the book is a vampire, it makes sense that this word is used 124 times. Additionally, this word reinforces the legend that vampires only come out at night. I found it very interesting, yet surprising that night is one of the smaller words in this graph. Some words, such as “man,” “deck,” and, “came” are bigger and bolder than “night,” but are used much less frequently in the novel. Ultimately, this graph is a great representation of many different frequent words used in the novel. Ultimately, this tool will help the reader get an idea of what the novel is about by using such a simple process.
- The second tool I used is a graph, which shows the most common words, in certain sections, or document segments of the text. Using this graph as a visualization tool was definitely effective. I was able to see a visualization of the most frequent tools, which is essential because I am a visual learner.
- The next text visualization tool that I used was the bubbles graph. This tool was an effective method for visualizing the text. I found this tool very interesting because of the way this graph represents the most frequent words in the text. I noticed that the words that are more frequently used are bolder in the bubble, while the bubble outlines slowly fade as the words become less frequent. Additionally, the blue words to the right of the bubbly graph also fade and grow smaller, as the words become less frequent.
Analysis:
This assignment was definitely beneficial to me, and I am excited to use Voyant tools as an effective way to teach my future students. The unique graphs shown on Voyant tools definitely gave me a representation and idea of what the novel is going to be about. Additionally, these tools will be helpful if I am analyzing multiple texts, written by the same author. I am definitely interested in using Voyant tools as a future teacher. I think that this technique will make the classroom a fun, learning environment. As a visual learner, I understand that interpreting a text can be difficult without seeing a visual representation, which is what Voyant tools provides. Additionally, when my future students are assigned readings, I think that using these tools will be a huge help to them because the students will have some knowledge about the text they are going to read before actually reading it. Having previous knowledge about a text will give students an easier time with understanding the plot of the text. I truly learned a lot from this assignment, and will definitely continue using Voyant tools.
-Sarah Feinman
