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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
Chapter 14
Explanation and Analysis—Jake's Narration:
Although Hemingway writes Jake’s narration in The Sun Also Rises in his well-known straightforward style, he is willing to break with this style in an effort to convey major shifts within the psychology of the character. A notable example comes about in Chapter 14, when Jake stumbles to bed after an especially raucous night. He begins to let his mind wander:
I wished Mike would not behave so terribly to Cohn, though. Mike was a bad drunk. Brett was a good drunk. Bill was a good drunk. Cohn was never drunk. Mike was unpleasant after he passed a certain point. I liked to see him hurt Cohn. I wished he would not do it, though, because afterward it made me disgusted at myself. That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality. That was a large statement. What a lot of bilge I could think up at night.
As Jake reflects on Mike’s behavior and his friends’ drunken demeanors, he distracts himself with his confusion about the morality or immorality of his own thoughts, as his thinking flows smoothly (though somewhat unexpectedly) along before he finally makes a self-aware note about his useless internal rambling. From there, he descends even further into stream-of-consciousness narration:
What rot, I could hear Brett say it. What rot! When you were with English you got into the habit of using English expressions in your thinking. The English spoken language—the upper classes, anyway—must have fewer words than the Eskimo. Of course I didn’t know anything about the Eskimo. Maybe the Eskimo was a fine language. Say the Cherokee. I didn’t know anything about the Cherokee, either. The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything. I liked them, though. I liked the way they talked. Take Harris. Still Harris was not the upper classes.
Jake’s mind moves rapidly from one thought to the next. He imagines Brett’s response to his own rambling, then reflects on English vocabulary, then muses on indigenous languages, and then returns to thinking about the English—ending on his friend Harris and his manner of speech. Hemingway’s depiction of these jumbled thoughts mimics the way the drunken and tired mind moves nonsensically from one subject to the next without spending much time on anything in particular. Through the use of this stream-of-consciousness device, the reader gets a sense of just how drunk Jake must be.
