We've found a lot of fascinating information from this project. Even accounting for the fact that Juan Rulfo's "No oyes ladrar a los perros" had no references made of any sort, our Cytoscape graph revealed a myriad of information we wouldn't have gained otherwise. Carlos Fuentes, by far, makes the most mythological references in his stories, while social references are the most common type of references made in our examined texts, with personal references taking the low end (an end which would be claimed by myths, were it not solely for Fuentes).
As to the reality graph, it's interesting to note that most stories spend almost all of their time exclusively in either reality or surreality, with only Julio Cortázar's "Casa tomada" and "La noche boca arriba" and Carlos Fuentes' "Chac Mool," and blending the two as heavily as the idea of Magic Realism would imply. In particular, Gabriel García Márquez appears to have mastered the two extremes, setting "Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes" almost entirely in reality while his "La siesta del martes" is almost purely surreal.
For our tense chart, we found that although there is no clear pattern that can conclusively state that one tense is used more than the other, the imperfect tense appears more than preterite in four of our texts while preterite appears more in only three. Additionally, when the preterite appears more than the imperfect, there is only a slight difference in the percentages that each are used. When the imperfect appears more than the preterite, the difference between the percentages is much greater. For the most part, this project has shown that, while these authors may have had a lot in common (to the point of inspiring each other), their differences in style, reference, and story content are deeper than suspected.
Rulfo: critiques the family institution and man's relationship to the land after the Mexican Revolution [An armed struggle in Mexico between 1910-1920 which although it was uniquely experienced regionally, was the root of a huge change in Mexican culture and government].
Márquez: references the name Esteban, a variant of the name Estevanico [the first man born in Africa to land in South America] this critiques Latin America's history with slavery and the predjudice against afro-latinos. He also references the mythical creatures "sirens". He alludes to the capacity of truth to inspire the magical. Marquez was influenced by the Colombian Conflict[An armed conflict that was characterized by mass violence between the Colombian government, and paramilitaries guerilla groups]. He was also influenced by the affect the banana massacre left on his family [A massacre of Colombian workers for the United Fruit Company in 1928 which Márquez's family was very vocal in protesting].
Fuentes: critiques the societal conflict between "nativo" heritage and European heritage [Many people in Mexico struggled with this in the '40s, '50s]. He also references a significant amount of mythological references and different religious allusions. He comments on the extreme devotion to Christianity that many Mexicans at the time had, and Chac Mool [a figure from the Aztecs and other preColombian religions takes over the main character's life] as though preColombian religions and myths are trying to take back their place in the lives of Mexican people.
Ferré: To start, "La muñeca menor" is a part of a collection of Ferré's stories called Pandora's box [a reference to greek mythology]. She describes social relationships in Puerto Rico, such as gender roles, childhood innocence compared to adult selfishness, and society's need to rationalize the unfamiliar.
Cortazar: uses existential questioning to express his views on society. He critiques the stagnation of the Argentine middle-class, and his dissatisfaction of the Argentine President at the time, Juan Perón. He also alludes to the internal conflict between European Heritage and Argentine Heritage experienced by many Argentinians.
Through the analysis of our data, we compared the percentage that each form of the past tense was used out of all of the past tense conjugations. We found that an interesting feature of the data is that although there is no clear pattern that can conclusively state that one tense is used more than the other, the imperfect tense appears more than the preterite tense in four of our texts while the preterite tense appears more in only three. Additionally, when preterite appears more than the imperfect, there is only a slight difference in the percentages that each are used. When the imperfect appears more than the preterite, the difference between the percentages is much greater. We can conclude that at least in story telling and recounting events, the imperfect tense is used much more frequently overall than the preterite tense.
Another linguistic aspect that we analyzed in the magic realism texts is the use of tú and usted. Spanish utilizes multiple forms of you. The main forms are:
Many other dialects of Spanish, such as in Argentina and Colombia, use 'vos' interchangeably with tú. In many dialects of spanish, the only plural form is ustedes, and tú is not used. Vosotros is mainly used in Spain and some regions of Latin America.
The only occurences of you in our magic realism texts appeared as tú, usted, and ustedes. The text that used forms of 'you' the most, was No oyes ladrar a los perros by Juan Rulfo. We used his text to determine the situation in which tú is used compared to usted. In the short story, a man is carrying his dying son to saftey. What we found through tagging every occurance of a form of 'you' in the story, was that tú was used frequently in the beginning of the story while the man is unaware of how serious his son's condition is. Once the man realizes that his son is dying, and is in a very serious condition, he begins using the form usted.
Tú occurs 8 times in the story, four of which are in the very beginning, and the other four spread out across the second half of the story. Usted occurs 15 times in the story, all of which are used in the second half of the story after the man grows concerned. The man is the only speaker to use any forms of you in this story. This shows that usted is not only used in a formal relationship, but also in a setting in which the speaker is concerned or worried. Usted even emphasizes a person's concern in speech.