THE LORD OF THE RINGS

The story that I chose to chart is one of my favorites: “The Lord of The Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien. Graphing even one book in the entire trilogy would be extremely difficult and convoluted, so I chose instead to follow one character, Frodo Baggins, and chart his broader journey. I enjoyed making this graph, and actually found it rather funny when looking at the path of Frodo’s story. I think Vonnegut’s method of assigning shape to stories gives it a more dynamic, visual feel and allows readers to follow the arc more easily.

The graph starts at the beginning, when the young hobbit is living happily in the peace of his shire. He has a simple life and everything he could wish for, until he inherits a mysterious ring from his cousin, Bilbo Baggins. From there, the general trajectory of Frodo’s life goes downhill as the wizard Gandalf tells him that the ring is actually the ring forged centuries ago by the dark lord Sauron to rule the earth. Frodo and a band of friends and warriors are then tasked with destroying the ring.

Life is kind of horrible for Frodo from this point. He gets stabbed by the wringwraiths, the powerful and undead servants of Sauron, and while he eventually heals, the wound leaves a lasting mark on him. He also gets stung/stabbed by a giant spider-like creature named Shelob. He encounters a previous owner of the ring, Gollum, and sees the devastating effects that it can have, and he begins to slowly give into the evilness of the ring. In addition, he witnesses time and time again the slaughter of innocent people and the cruelty of Sauron. All this, while being chased here and back again by Orcs, who are flesh hungry killers and a constant annoyance. Life is kind of horrible.

This downward trajectory only stops when, in book three, Frodo finally reaches Mount Doom and destroys the ring. However, instead of everything resolving nicely, life doesn’t get a whole lot better for Frodo. The combination of the ring and the stabbing have left serious emotional and physical effects on him, and while everyone around him resumes their old life, he feels unable to. He has plateaued  .

Frodo realizes that life in the shire will never be the same, and decides to go to the Undying Lands, a mythical heaven-like place where elves reside. The end of the book sees Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf and many other elves crossing the sea to the Undying Lands. The implication is that Frodo’s life will improve while there, but the readers are left unsure.

STORIFY

Another way to chart the shape of a story is to follow a timeline. A site I really love is Storify, which allows users to group Tweets, photos, text and articles about a certain subject. I believe that this is a perfect example of a digital story- not only is compiled entirely of digital materials, but the Tweets and pictures used are from a variety of users all across the internet. It brings communities together, and allows someone to easily come in and watch a story from the beginning. Storify has become very popular for charting trending hashtags, such as #YesAllWomen or the more recent #WhyIStayed. As events unfolded this summer in Ferguson, many people documented it using Storify.

For this example, I pulled a Storify compiled that shows the tweets of former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. This past Tuesday, Fleischer took to Twitter to recount the events of September 11, 2001