Issues with Sentiment Scoring

Lots of “Joy” in an old Childhood Trauma

In the image above, index 75 of “1984” shows a peak for the sentiment “joy”. However, when investigating closer, this section of the book describes an old childhood memory of Winston that keeps haunting him as an adult.

When he was young child, Winston grabs a small piece chocolate under the eyes of his starving mother and his baby sister and runs away. When he comes back hours later, both his mother and sister are gone, never to be seen again.

This section gained many positive matches for “joy”, examples of words that contributed to a high score for this sentiment: precious, chocolate, mother. Furthermore, “food”, which is also associated with “joy”, is also being mentioned quite frequently. Unfortunately rather for describing the scarcity of food, as in the lack of food, rationing of food, the fighting over food …