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Setting
Definition of Stream of Consciousness
Stream of consciousness is a style or technique of writing that tries to capture the natural flow of a character's extended thought process, often by incorporating sensory impressions, incomplete ideas, unusual syntax... read full definition
Stream of consciousness is a style or technique of writing that tries to capture the natural flow of a character's extended thought process, often by incorporating... read full definition
Stream of consciousness is a style or technique of writing that tries to capture the natural flow of a character's... read full definition
Section 3
Explanation and Analysis—Gabriel's Thoughts:
Joyce’s use of stream of consciousness is more pronounced in his 1922 novel Ulysses, which arguably represents the apotheosis of the technique in Western modernist literature. Still, there are glimpses of it in "The Dead," too, which features a close third-person perspective. In this passage, the narrator tracks Gabriel's disjointed thought process as he and Gretta prepare for bed in their hotel room:
His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? [...] Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. [...] Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees.
Here, the narration moves quickly from mundane observation (the arrangement of clothes on the furniture and floor) to self-reflection (Gabriel’s own “riot of emotions”) to profound concern (his anticipation of Julia's death), emphasizing Gabriel’s scattered, distracted frame of mind as he tries to make sense of the night's events and his own complicated feelings. Stream of consciousness in “The Dead” doesn't involve bending grammatical or syntactical conventions—as it does in Ulysses—to mirror the way thought flows, unmediated, through the mind. Nonetheless, it allows the reader to form a kind of intimacy with Gabriel and understand him as a fully fleshed-out character, rather than as a stand-in for a moral message (as characters in nineteenth-century literature were often used).
Related Themes:
