SPATIAL ANALYSIS

SPATIAL ANALYSIS

Chicken Soup for your Corporate Ass is made up of five stories that are connected. They are not bound in chapters, but are presented as five story lines that you can read one by one, or by following the links that appear in each one of the stories. The hypertext uses a limited number of tools. In fact, there are no images or videos, no coloured fonts or motion, we find plain text and links that connect us through differnet nodes “which act like dynamic footnotes that automatically retrieve the material to which they refer” (Moulthrop 1991).

In this work the spatial references are not used as mere scenery, they are reflections of the connections made between the stories and they also serve as descriptors of the poem´s characters. In fact, they help us to understand the behaviour, the moral and the psychology of the main characters, they reflect their economic status, and the position they hold in society. Spatial references, in the whole, draw a map of connections, that we, as readers, are going to follow taking different paths, although eventually every reader will have visited the whole thing without missing any destination. In fact, this text is what Joyce (1991) called a “exploratory hypertext, which most often occurs in read-only form, and allows readers to control the transformation of a defined body of material”.

Actually, during the entire text, the spatial references take us to familiar places that we visit once and again under the perspective of different characters, for instance, the lab at the research center, where Young Li Jr worked for a period of time while at university, but it is also the workplace of Victoria Washington. The reader of this text does not have to take any decisions, because we are dealing with an exploratory hypertext, the story is already written, s/he just wanders through the text without changing the flow of the story, not playing god, but gathering information to complete a global vision of Chicken Soup for your Corporate Ass. Generally, as we read the five stories independently, we will get a local picture of what it is told in every one of them, but, as we make the connections and re-read the stories, we will get a global view. That is, Corporate evil is made of the greed of the landlord, the health - careless insurance company, the destruction of the rainforest etc...

In order to better analyse these issues, we are going to take a tour through the Internal and External Spaces within this narration.

Internal Space

Most of the story happens in Cincinnati in the United States, where most of our main characters live. Other settings are also important, like Seoul, in Korea, and the New Zealand rainforest, home of the Maori people.

The towns, cities and countries that the story referrs to, are:

Cincinnati, USA

Midland, in Michigan

USA

Seoul, Korea

The Rainforest in New Zealand

We can start the tour of the hypertext taking a global international view, of a capitalist phenomenon, globalisation. American companies manufacture their products in other countries because of cheaper labour and cheaper production costs. Labour is easy to get and to control in countries where employment rights do not exist. It seems like these facts do not affect Americans, but all along the story, the consequences at a local level are revealed. Even Darren and Janine´s holidays can be ruined if the stretch of New Zealand rainforest is exploited by Young Li Senior´s company.

Work places are important too, as the title tells us, Corporate is the key to the story, and most of the relationships that appear in the hypertext are of a professional nature.

The main companies, and work places that appear, are:

Parker Brothers

The Korean factory

The Midland factory

Young Li Sr´s company in Seoul

A laboratory in a research center at Procter & Gamble

University of Cincinnati

A child care center

Ward Callahan´s office in the upper floor at Procter & Gamble

HMO Corporation

There are other places mentioned where the main characters interact and that are also of great importance, because they too connect people:

Airy Heights

Darren´s pool (jacuzzi)

Darren´s house

A Sports bar

Church

The Army

External Space

The spatial distribution of the text is very interesting. The hypertext is not organize in chapters and there is no indications of where to start reading or how to do it, this is left to the reader who, according to his/her interest would read on, read it once, twice, or many times etc... The more the reader wants to know, the more the reader will have to read on. Evenmore, it is left to the reader to make connections between the characters to find out the unity of the five stories. The authors do not give any clues as to whom is friend with who, or who is an employee of, is up to the reader to find out those things, and make these connections.

It is also surprising that throughout the text there are very few descriptions. The hypertext relies in facts and the authors follow a very objective and direct style. In fact, most of the descriptions in the hypertext are spatial references, and we learn through them how the characters are. When a direct description about a character occurs, this is not free, it does serve a purpose, in the case of Victoria Washington, for instance, the purpose is to make more evident social injustice as she is described as an African – American woman.

The organizational space within the hypertext is very clear. The five story lines are classified by title, and you can read it one by one, or follow one story and from there, jump to another one clicking on the available links. The links take us to other story lines and show us the connection between the story we are following at that moment and the one that we are about to follow. In this way, we are always remainded of the relationships between the characters and the story. However, the reader does not get lost, the order in which the text is read is not relevant, the reader will always read it in its full length and even more than once, and therefore, will not miss any information.

In conlusion, this hypertext has no defined beginning and no defined end, therefore it could be said that it has a circular structure, and the more rounds we take, the more we learn about the story.

SUMMARY CHARACTERS BACKGROUND CONCLUSION WORKS CITED

Academic year 2008/2009

Universitat de València Press

aconfer@alumni.uv.es