I decided to compare both "Araby" and "Eveline" on Google Maps because I knew that Eveline's world was far larger than Araby's, but the discrepancy was still breathtaking. Although I couldn't nail down the location of the actual bazaar itself, the boy's life is completely encompassed in an area barely one square mile. Eveline thought she was going to 'Buenos Ayres' (a whopping 6,839 miles!!), but even if she traveled with Frank to Liverpool (a mere 134 miles), she still would have traveled orders of magnitude farther than the boy in Araby.
The boy mentions in passing crossing the river during his chivalrous trip, and while Eveline knows that she will "be on the sea with Frank" she can't fathom it in any way other than drowning and it is ultimately what hems in her existence. Even though I really do want to take a cruise someday, when I play on Google Maps and inadvertently zoom too far in on the open ocean, I panic for a split second, so I can almost relate to her sheer terror.
I chose to make my base map the satellite view to try and bring Joyce's imagery closer to reality. It would only be better if the map could show the weather, I think; Joyce's descriptions of place and aura are intensely descriptive.
I think it would be fascinating to load the same data table into both Google Maps and Gephi. Gephi can't show us geographical relationships, but Google Maps can't show us thematic relationships, even though both types (and probably more) are all hidden right there in the data. For my final project, I've thought of doing just this to try and map out the locations and relationships of publishers and their books on my Goodreads lists. Why? Maybe because I feel certain that my books are likely exclusively American or Western European; maybe because it might be interesting to see what books are published where. Maybe it's just because playing with Google Maps is too much fun.