Visually Representing Chrysal
In
looking up countries mentioned in Chrysal,
I found that all of the numbers were surprisingly low.
While
it is true that Chrysal spends a good amount of the book in England, ‘England’
was only used 62 times total. Peru was mentioned mostly at the beginning of the
book, except where Chrysal returns to Peru in volume 2. Jamaica was found only
at the beginning, while most of the rest appeared later on.
One
of the things that stands out especially is the fact that the heaviest
saturation of country names occurs in volume 2, when the war- and
politics-centric stories begin. While some names are mentioned in passing in
the start of the book (i.e. when Chrysal mentions a war between Spain and
England), most appear towards the end. Even England, which has the most
mentions of any of the countries I looked at, is mostly mentioned in the first
part of the novel when Chrysal is travelling there. I had thought that there
were far more names mentioned earlier in the book, especially because of all
the character-switching, but Jamaica, Peru, and England were nearly the only
countries that were given more than a passing comment.
Change/Exchange
Simply from the title, we know
that the story of Chrysal tracks the movement of a spirit that started as a
piece of gold and moved through other forms before spending the majority of his
existence as a guinea. Chrysal changes "masters" many time, in a variety
of ways as is familiar to anyone who has read the book. In an attempt to track
the reasons Chrysal changed masters, and as a play on the monetary value of
him, it was necessary to examine the words "change" and
"exchange." In context, as can be seen, overwhelmingly the word
"exchange" is used primarily when Chrysal is involved in commerce of
some type - generally to or from one currency to another. Although Chrysal was
changed as a means of charity or respect six times, this category also includes
bribes, which are referred to in the book as forms of respect. Most
significantly, although Chrysal interacts with a number of characters, he is
only “changed” or “exchanged” a relatively few number of times and he is never
stole. This dissection calls into account how Chrysal is actually able to
interact with all the characters if they are not his direct masters.
Types of Currency
Betting and Gaming
Although Chrysal
seldom changes hands through gaming and most of his exchanges are made by
payment of goods and services (or something like it), gaming is a subject that
is brought up quite often throughout the novel. As the graph shows, “game” and “gaming” appear a number of
times through the text. However, “bet”
is concentrated near what would fall around page 240 or close to it. This is one of those instances in which
Chrysal changes masters by way of gambling. We could chart “dream” and find a peak at the same location –
the place in which Chrysal is won by the bishop’s wife. I did find it interesting that, at the
spot in which “bet”, “bets” and “rubber” (which is a set of games) peak, game
and gaming drop off slightly. “Game”
and “games”, of course, come back strong at the end.
Importance
of Names vs. Titles
Chrysal, the coin
as well as the novel, is clearly much more concerned with the titles of
characters than the actual names.
I was forced to leave “general” off of the above chart because it threw
everything else into obscurity, coming in at 266 uses in the text. “Grace” and “king” were second and
third with 130 and 94 uses, respectively.
The majority of the uses of “grace” may be attributed to the bishop’s
wife. There were, however, other
characters referred as “her Grace”.
With respect to actual names, George was used more frequently than
Pitt. This is somewhat surprising,
considering the novel itself was dedicated to William Pitt and the dedication
used the name extensively. In
fact, the majority of uses of Pitt and George are found in the beginning of the
novel in the dedication. Part of
the reason for the importance of titles over individual names is possibly an
attempt to avoid detection by the people who were being ridiculed and
criticized by the novel. Johnstone
would have had to be careful who he named before he began his criticisms.
Virtue, Corruption, Vice, Power, and
Charity in Chrysal
In Chrysal, the words virtue, corruption (corrupt), vice, and power
come into play many times throughout the novel. I was surprised at the frequency of the word charity because
I did not remember seeing that word that much in the novel as a whole until I
did the word frequency. Power was another word that had a lot of frequency in
the novel. I was really surprised
that the word corruption was not used in the novel yet most of the owners of
Chrysal were corrupted in some way. Virtue was used very frequently in the
novel and it had many connotations. One of those connotations could be the
virtuous noblemen (Sir Pitt) and both George’s.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Chrysal
The seven deadly sins are Pride,
Greed, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Sloth and Gluttony. Chrysal does a
wonderful job in chronicling all of them.
Many of the other graphs and charts that we are presenting have a large
amount of ups and downs – greater variations from chapter to chapter. However, charting the usage of the sins
is one of the more consistent graphs that I could come up with from this
novel. Gluttony is the only one of
these sins that is not directly named but this by no means signifies its
absence from the novel. The mere
size of the venerable Matron described on pages 274-275 show clear signs of Gluttony
and excess. My first guess, when
considering the topic of the seven deadly sins for discussion, was that Greed
would be at the top of the list followed closely by Envy. I was surprised to see that Greed was
rarely mentioned at all, instead referred to as Avarice, but was still not at
the top of the sin heap at thirty-four times in the text. I was equally surprised that Envy only
showed up nine times in the text.
The winner turned out to be Pride with a total of thirty-eight appearances.
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