I do believe that Wordle and Ngram are useful Digital Humanities tools because they helped reaffirm my interpretation and analysis information of my short story. I thought they were fun, new,and interesting but ultimately a new way of doing old things. The Wordle was a new way of doing old things because the prominent words it identified in my story were descriptions of it’s setting like Water, Bridge, and even Now. However, the word Now is interesting because the author tricks the reader into thinking something is real (happening Now) when it is not. Yet when you look back the author actually foreshadows the twist ending of the story by using certain words to establish what is really happening (happening Now). Nevertheless, this is still a new way of doing old things because the Wordle picked a word that, when interpreted in the context of the story and it’s theme, revealed the theme of the story.
I found the Ngram interesting because I used it to see if the three words that were prominent in my story about the Civil War were also prominent in other pieces of writing when America was in other crisis’s. I found that to be true with the word Now which was most useful in my search. This only affirmed the theme of my story about how war changes our present and how during peace we don’t think about the present but how to remember the past and that memory is subjective. All in all, I believe Wordle and Ngram are useful Digital Humanities tools but they are just new ways of doing old things. I would also like to mention these tools are only useful if interpreted correctly because if no interpretation is used then these tools will just reveal interesting things about words in your story but provide no insight about your story.
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