Reflection:
Through the creation of my map narrative, I was able to better understand where each event in the book took place. Furthermore, this deepened my comprehension of the environment that the characters are in throughout Never Let Me Go. This post is similar to my timeline, where it follows the lives of Kathy and Ruth, but it gives destinations so the viewer is able to follow a map instead of a timeline. This helps people who need more visuals to understand a concept. Sometimes a map is better than a timeline. The map is a great visual, but the pictures were the hardest thing for me to figure out. Hailsham was easy because of the Never Let Me Go movie, but I wasn’t sure what to put for the Cottages and Ruth’s recovery center. I ended up putting what I imagine these places to look like. For the Cottages I did a classic English countryside cottage, and for the recovery center I put a hospital and garden to represent where the residents might spend their time. While this might not be the most accurate, it gives a new perspective to the book so that the viewer can have a deeper understanding of each location. The Voyant analysis added at the end of the story map is another form of visual aid that helps the viewer understand Never Let Me Go—and my map—better. It gives a more in-depth analysis of the text of the book, instead of what the reader might imagine when reading. The Voyant visual that I chose is the loom of connected words. I focused on friendship, specifically between Kathy, Ruth and Tommy. These are things that I have been discussing in my timeline and story map so I thought these words would be a helpful addition to the narrative. To find a deeper meaning to what Voyant showed me, I looked at how these different words were connected to each other on the screen, versus what I imagined it would look like from reading the book. There turned out to be a big difference between the two so that is what led my discussion. To engage deeper with the audience, I made sure to make my descriptions of each place give new perspectives, and explain what happened at each location to remind the viewer, before diving into analysis. I think this helps anyone be able to understand my story map, even if they have never read Never Let Me Go. In my 3.1 post I made sure to be as descriptive as possible in my title slide as well, to give more context before focusing on each location and the Voyant analysis. This project was fairly straightforward for me, with minimal issues. However, at first I had trouble with Voyant. I had a hard time figuring out how to put different words in and get the visual that I desired for my narrative. It also took me some time to decide how to analyze what was created in Voyant. But once I got over these hurdles it was not too hard. Overall, I was able to smoothly make this map narrative to help my audience visualize Kahty and Ruth’s friendship to understand it more deeply.