Research Question: How do the frequent terms within voyant relate to the theme of John Willey’s memoir?
The memoir Rosemary, Jacob, and I transcribed is written by John Willey’s children after his death. Willey was a honorable servant of the Lord in the Brn Church. Willey comes from a religious family; his father, brothers, and himself all held active roles in the Church. Unfortunately, John Willey’s mother passed away when he was just six years old. But Willey’s courage and love allowed him to still live a great and loving life. Willey’s eventual passion for religion at 21 years old gave him the faith and love for something greater than himself. Willey attended and taught at religious schools, growing love for his pupils. Eventually, Willey was given the honor of becoming a minister, one of his goals in life. Later, Willey marries a teacher he worked with, named Susan Hutton, whom Willey had four children with. One of his daughters passed away in her early infancy. Despite a long and happy life, Willey suffered through medical issues his last six years prior to death. Most of his vital organs were affected, and Willey was mostly unable to commit to his duty to the church. He maintained a positive outlook on life through his suffering. Willey was still extremely faithful and believed everything would workout well. All he wanted to do was get back to his duty as a minister. The memoir ends with Willey’s family comforting him through song as he passes away. Willey and his family maintain positive up through his death, believing he is leaving his suffering to go be happy with the Lord. Overall, the memoir of John Willey is an excellent story of a man who lived an honorable life as a servant to his Lord, and eventually had his spirits lifted to be with the Lord.
The Willey memoir consists of 3,519 words in total. Of those words, 1,106 were described as unique word forms, displaying the complexity of Willey’s texts. Additionally, Willey’s memoir seems to have a pretty standard sentence structure to todays writing, considering the average sentence length of 33.5 words. Through using Whitley’s tool described as distant reading, I was able to see the key patterns emerging in Willey’s text. For example, illey’s frequently appearing words are years, time, great, Lord, life, love and Jesus. This leads me to believe that Willey lived a happy life, filled with faith. Through comparing Samuel Tippett’s memoir with Willey’s on voyant, there are some clear patterns emerging across their lives. For example, both these memoirs are filled with religion. Common words emerge, like Lord and savior, clearly portraying both these men’s passions toward religion. Additionally, love is a word appearing in both texts, perhaps showing that their faith towards religion promoted a sense of love in their lives. Overall, through examining Willey’s and Tippett’s texts, and skimming through a bunch more, there is a clear sense of a passion towards religion in these memoirs. This is very interesting, considering the different locations and time periods these men lived their lives.
Visualization, is a tool especially prevalent on voyant, which was introduced to me by the Whitley reading. Almost every tool I worked with on voyant has some form of visualization to it. For example, the cirrus is an excellent resource for compiling all the key terms. Then, using collocates is a great way to further examine which of those words often relate to each other. For example, I noticed that great and years often appeared near each other, as well as savior and Lord. This leads me to believe Willey had great years in his life and viewed his Lord as his savior.
Through examining voyant tools, as well as reading through the Willey text, my research question was clearly answered. There is a very clear connection between the frequently appearing words, and the common theme of Willey’s memoir. For example, the words like years, great, Lord, love and Jesus all clearly portray that Willey’s life was a happy one filled with religion. This is reflected in my reading, as Willey devoted his life to his religious workings and seemed to be happy with this choice. Willey also used his faith to maintain happiness in his suffering toward the end of his life. Similarly, Whitley explains how human brains are able to easily notice patterns in their reading. Interestingly, voyant tools put all those patterns in one place, allowing me to notice the same themes I picked up on while reading.
Tyler George is a political science and history double major at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Tyler formerly attended Lincoln-Sudbury high school, in his hometown, Sudbury, Massachusetts. Tyler plays club hockey at Bucknell, and also participates as an Army ROTC cadet in the Bison Battalion.
