Stream of Consciousness - Examples and Definition

Stream of Consciousness Definition
In literature, circulation of attention is a way of narration that describes happenings in the float of thoughts in the minds of the characters.

The time period become to begin with coined by psychologist William James in his research, The Principles of Psychology. He writes:

“… it's far not anything joined; it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘move’ is the metaphors by means of which it's far maximum naturally described. In speakme of it hereafter, let’s name it the circulation of thought, cognizance, or subjective existence.”

Another appropriate term for this tool is “interior monologue,” wherein the individual idea approaches of a character, related to his or her actions, are portrayed within the shape of a monologue that addresses the person itself. Therefore, it's far different from the “dramatic monologue” or “soliloquy,” in which the speaker addresses the audience or the 1/3 person.

Examples of Stream of Consciousness in Literature
The flow of consciousness fashion of writing is marked through the sudden upward thrust of thoughts and shortage of punctuation. The use of this narration style is normally associated with the cutting-edge novelist and brief story writers of the twentieth century. Let us examine a few examples of the stream of consciousness narrative method in literature:

Example #1: Ulysses (By James Joyce)
James Joyce successfully employs the narrative mode in his novel Ulysses, which describes a day inside the life of a middle-aged Jew, Mr. Leopold Broom, living in Dublin, Ireland. Read the following excerpt:

“He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a replicate within a reflect (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young determine of then is seen, precious manly, strolling on a nipping morning from the old residence in Clambrassil to the excessive school, his e book satchel on him bandolier wise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother’s notion.”

These lines screen the mind of Bloom, as he thinks of the younger Bloom. The self-mirrored image is carried out by means of the flow of mind that takes him returned to his past.

Example #2: Mrs. Dalloway (By Virginia Woolf)
Another 20th-century author that observed James Joyce’s narrative technique changed into Virginia Woolf. Let us study an excerpt from her novel Mrs. Dalloway:

“What a lark! What a plunge! For so it always seemed to me when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which I can listen now, I burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air became in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; kick back and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as I then was) solemn, feeling as I did, standing there at the open window, that something awful turned into approximately to happen …”

By voicing her inner feelings, the Ms. Woolf offers freedom to the characters to travel to and fro in time. Mrs. Dalloway went out to buy flower for herself, and on the way her thoughts move through the past and present, giving us an perception into the complicated nature of her character.

Example #three: The British Museum Is Falling Down (By David Lodge)
We notice the usage of this approach in David Lodge’s novel The British Museum Is Falling Down. It is a comic novel that imitates the move of attention narrative techniques of writers like Henry James, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Below is an excerpt from Chapter three of the novel:

“It partook, he thought, transferring his weight within the saddle, of metempsychosis, the way his humble life fell into moulds prepared with the aid of literature. Or turned into it, he wondered, choosing his nose, the end result of closely studying the sentence structure of the English novelists? One had resigned oneself to having no private language any more, but one had clung wistfully to the illusion of a personal assets of events. A discover and fruitless phantasm, it regarded, for here, inevitably came the limousine, with its Very Important Personage, or Personages, dimly visible within the indoors. The policeman saluted, and the group pressed forward, murmuring ‘Philip’, ‘Tony’, ‘Margaret’, ‘Prince Andrew’.”

We see the imitation of the normal shape of the flow-of-aware narrative technique of Virginia Woolf. We notice the combination of the outer and internal realities in the passage that is so standard of Virginia Woolf, specifically the induction of the reporting clauses “he idea,” and “he wondered,” within the middle of the said clauses.

Function of Stream of Consciousness
Stream of awareness is a fashion of writing developed by way of a set of writers at the beginning of the 20 th century. It geared toward expressing in words the flow of characters’ thoughts and emotions of their minds. The approach aspires to give readers the affect of being in the minds of the characters. Therefore, the inner view of the minds of the characters sheds light on plot and motivation within the novel.