Stream of Consciousness

Stream of consciousness is a special mode of narration that undertakes to capture the full spectrum and the continuous flow of a character’s mental process, where sense perception mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts and memories, experiences, feelings and random associates.

In literature, technique that records the multifarious thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to logical argument or narrative sequence. It is a narrative method where a writer describes the unspoken thoughts and feelings of their characters without resorting to objective description or conventional dialogue. The writer attempts by the stream of consciousness to reflect all the forces, external and internal, influencing the psychology of a character at a single moment.

The technique was first employed by Edouard Dujardin (1861-1949) in his novel Les Lanriers sont coupes (1888) and was subsequently used by such notable writers as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner. The phrase "stream of consciousness" to indicate the flow of inner experience was first used by William James in Principles of Psychology (1890). There he identified four basic characteristics of "stream of consciousness". Those are:

1.Every state tends to be the part of a personal consciousness which means a neutral single personal consciousness is not possible, because though every thought and idea is mutually independent, they are not separate. Each belongs to others somehow.

2.Within each personal consciousness, states are changing. It means none of the state of mind and thought remains the same while it is reminded repeatedly. Because our sensibility changes, brain becomes more modified with time-laps and ultimately the thought is suffused.

3.Each personal consciousness is sensibly continuous. That means if a consciousness is interrupted anyhow by a time laps or a violent interruption like the flash and sound of a sudden thunder fall around, though the state of the consciousness changes, the quality of the consciousness remains the same.

4.Consciousness is always interested in some parts of its object to the exclusion of others, and welcomes or rejects­­­­—chooses from among them, in a word—all the while. That is our mind deliberately chooses the things, what we call ‘experience’, by the entire habit of our attention. And this habit of attention is loaded with accentuation, emphasis, selective attention and interest and deliberative will, which make sour perception. Therefore, ones experience differs from the other people.

In literature, as it is said before, the technique of stream of consciousness, however, attempts to portray the remote, preconscious state that exists before the mind organizes sensations. Consequently, the re-creation of a stream of consciousness frequently lacks the unity, explicit cohesion, and selectivity of direct thought.

Widely used in narrative fiction, the technique was perhaps brought to its highest point of development in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939) by the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce. Other exponents of the form were American novelist William Faulkner and British novelist Virginia Woolf. The British writer Dorothy Richardson is considered by some actually to be the pioneer in use of the device. Her novel Pilgrimage (1911 -1938), a 12-volume sequence, is an intense analysis of the development of a sensitive young woman and her responses to the world around her.

Now lets check some scripts where I would attempt to describe how stream flows on.

It’s a part from James Joyce’s, Ulysses

Pineapple rocky lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl shoveling scoopfuls of creams for a Christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne sucking red jujubes white.
A sombre Y. M. C. A. young man, watchful among the warm sweet fumes of Graham Lemon's, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr Bloorn.
Heart to heart talks.
Bloo ... Me? no.
Blood of the Lamb.

So, this is all about the "stream of consciousness" and here ends mytodays prsntation .

Thanx.