Mapping Velocity

Note: This page is a general outline of our project. To view our in-depth anaylsis and findings, please go to:

http://mappingvelocity.webs.com/index.htm

Book: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Author: Dave Eggers

Team Members:Jen Duncan, Binnur Erbil, Eric Moylan, Adrianna Quetin

Synopsis: This book is about two friends who, following the death of a third childhood friend, make a week long trip around the world in order to give away 32,000 dollars.

Will, the narrator, has inherited the money through a companys use of his silhouette. Will is strugling to deal with his best friends death and at the begginning of the book, decides to take his other best friend and get rid of the money he considers a burden. They travel to nine different countries in 7 days. They distribute the money to the young and old, anyone they believe is worthy. Even taxi drivers receieve disporportionate payment for their service. The money is given to its recipients face to face, hidden and even thrown in the air for it to be found and picked up.

Throughout the journey, Will undertakes imaginary conversations in his head with both strangers and those around him. These internal dialogues offer us insight into Will and his inner most feelings. We learn he is struggling with his friends death, the recent beating he suffered when Hand left him alone, his childhood and his mother. 

The journey surves as a giefing exercise for Will. Although he denies this, it is obvious he needs to rid himself of this money in a 'good way' . He had intended to use the money to save Jack, his dead friend, but he died  before he got the chance. We are left with a sense that this goal has been achieved, to an extent, by the end of the book.  However it is short lived. The opening ad the closing of the book tell of Will's impending death, a mere two months after the events on the book take place.

About Dave Eggers: 

Dave Eggers is an American author. He owns a small publishing company called MacSweeney's, which is based in San Francisco. Eggers has also set up 826 Valencia, a non profit tutoring centre and writing school for children.

Eggers has written three books as well as numerous short stories. His first work, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, was a memoir and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The book announced Eggers as a serious player in modern literature. The book was both a critical and comercial success. You Shall Know our Velocity was his next offering. It was published in 2002, two years after Egegrs's initial ofering. Egger's first novel was not as warmly recieved as his earlier work. It was widely said that although the writing was typical of his memoir, the story was lacking. Yale Book Review said of the novel. "Despite his obvious talents, not even Eggers can successfully build a gripping plot around white males in their twenties giving away their oppressively abundant money." ( http://www.yalereviewofbooks.com/archive/fall02/review09.shtml.htm). Eggers must recent novel is entitled What is the What.

Many reviews of this work were conducted in light of the man Dave Eggers, not simply his words. To many he is an enigma. After the success of his debut offering, he left his publishing house and fired his manager. He is media shy. YSKOV was initially released through his publishing company; only 10,000 copies were released. There are many who want to try to understand his motives but because he is so inaccessible, they are left second guessing his motives.

Thesis: 

"Then you make a map of the book, and everything changes" - (Moretti, p36)

"The ways that individuals talk and write provide windows into their emotional and cognitive worlds." - (http://www.liwc.net/liwcdescription.php)

Thesis:

     Through the use of Google Earth and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, we intend to illustrate the physical and emotional journey of Will, the main character of Dave Egger’s novel You Shall Know Our Velocity!

Explanation:

    A common literary device in You shall Know Our Velocity! is the flashback. While the novel is about moving forward, the momentum of the trip, being on the go, Will is constantly reaching back into his past and his old world. Although he is attempting to escape the loss of his friend Jack, neither Will nor Hand is ever able to be fully present in their travel. On several occasions, the landscape, weather or people remind them of somewhere back in America. Will, in particular, is prone to reminiscing about events in his past. While this is a device is expository in nature, it also furthers the theme of the book, “everywhere you go, there you are” to use a common colloquialism. Despite their best efforts to run toward the future, Will and Hand are forever confronting their past. This is seen in particular with Will’s regular phone calls to his mother. Despite being gone for only a week, Will phones his mother four times throughout the novel. We ran the dialogues through LIWC to see what we could discern from the tone of their conversation. This data was then compared to the data resulting from Will and Hand’s conversations with people they encounter on their trip.

Findings:

    It is interesting to note that the major dialogues that occur with other characters follow a pattern through the novel. The first dialogue, with Annette, is philosophical in nature, not about this world but another, almost wholly separate. The second dialogue, with Ingres, is a discussion of the past. With Tavvi, in the third dialogue revolves around the future. When Will finds himself in Riga, the fourth dialogue with Katya, contains almost nothing more than the present. While the trip has been about constantly being of the moment, it is not until the end of the novel in which this is realized. Perhaps laying out the theme once again, that you cannot escape life but must experience it in all its forms.

Tools:

     We used three tools to aid our project and to realise our thesis. They are Google Earth, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and Wordle. Here is a brief overview of each tool:

Google Earth:

Google Earth is a mapping tool. This tool allows users to view locations on the earth, in the ocean and in the sky. There are many features contained in the tool. For example, users can use the street view to look at streets, landmarks can be explored and directions can be obtained. With the new updated version (Version 5) it is possible to create a tour and play the recording back. This was the chief feature used by this group in out project. For a greater understanding of Google Earth. click here.

LIWC:

LIWC is a text analysis tool. It works by calculating the degrree to which people use different categories of words. User input text and the program returns a number of results as well as the number of words used.The results are categorised by 'Self-Reference' 'Social Words' 'Positive Emotions' 'Negative Emotions' 'Overall Cognitive Words' 'Articles' and 'Big Words' This tool allowed use to analyse our choosen texts and determine Will's emotions, thus giving us a closer reading of the text and its under workings. (http://www.liwc.net/index.php)

Wordle:

Wordle is a text tool that allows users to input a text and create a "Word Cloud". Different themes can be observed through the largest words. The bigger the word, the more frequent its use. Wordle creates the image randomly, aside from the size of the words. There is a 'randomize' feature that allows users to alter the image until they have a cloud they are happy with. This tool allowed us to visualise the texts we inserted in the LIWC and so we were able to determine what exactly the positive and negative emotions were. (http://www.wordle.net/)