The numbers of characters appearing in each individual chapter are plotted in Fig. 2 depicts how character numbers evolve as the discourse unfolds. This allows us to order the data in two ways, the order in which the events happen (story time) and the way in which the narrative is told (discourse time).įrom the five books containing 343 chapters, 2,007 characters were identified, of which 1,806 interact with another at least once. In such cases we use the date corresponding to the earliest dated event occurring in that chapter. In many cases, chapters clearly span multiple days. We used this second set of data to assign an approximate date to each chapter of each book, allowing us to study events as they occur within the in-story timeline. According to the Reddit timeline, the opening events of A Game of Thrones take place on 22 April of the year 297, and the closing events of A Dance with Dragons take place on 8 February in the year 300. Many of these dates are educated guesses because no explicit in-story timeline is provided by the author. This timeline makes a number of assumptions which are noted in the dataset. This is an approximate timeline of the events of Ice and Fire indexed by the Westerosi calendar date, compiled by fans and followers, and maintained by the Reddit user identified as PrivateMajor ( ). To analyze the dynamics and evolution of the narrative we also use a second dataset. Discourse time, on the other hand, refers to the order and pacing of events as experienced by the reader it is measured in chapters and pages. It is measured in days and months, albeit using the fictional Westerosi calendar in the case of Ice and Fire. Story time refers to the order and pace of events as they occurred in the fictional world. To do this, we recognize an important distinction between story time and discourse time. Inspired by this feature, we are particularly interested in deaths as signature events in Ice and Fire, and therefore, we study intervals between them ( 21).
A song of ice and fire tv#
Indeed, “Much of the anticipation leading up to the final season (of the TV series) was about who would live or die, and whether the show would return to its signature habit of taking out major characters in shocking fashion” ( 20). Robert Baratheon met his while boar hunting, Viserys Targaryen while feasting, and Eddard Stark when confessing a crime in an attempt to protect his children. Whether you are ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, heir to an ancient dynasty, or Warden of the North, your end may be nearer than you think. A distinguishing feature of Ice and Fire is that character deaths are perceived by many readers as random and unpredictable. To investigate the success of Ice and Fire, we go beyond graph theory to explore cognitive accessibility as well as differences between how significant events are presented and how they unfold ( 19). Graph theory has been used to compare character networks to real social networks ( 15) in mythological ( 16), Shakespearean ( 17), and fictional literature ( 18). This provides measurable support for the widely held view that significant deaths in A Song of Ice and Fire are unpredictable chapter by chapter. Geometric distributions are memoryless in that the time since the last death does not inform as to the time to the next. It is also found that the distribution of intervals between significant deaths in chapters is different to that for the in-story timeline it is geometric rather than power law. We propose that structural features in the narrative that are reflected in our actual social world help readers to follow and to relate to the story, despite its sprawling extent. These are consistent with power-law distributions commonly found in interevent times for a range of nonviolent human activities in the real world.
We also analyze the distribution of time intervals between significant deaths measured with respect to the in-story timeline. Furthermore, the degrees of the most connected characters reflect a cognitive limit on the number of concurrent social connections that humans tend to maintain. By tracking the network of character interactions as the story unfolds, it is found that structural properties remain approximately stable and comparable to real-world social networks. Martin’s epic novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, works noted for their scale and complexity. Network science and data analytics are used to quantify static and dynamic structures in George R.
0 kommentar(er)
