Thursday, January 7, 2016

From A Portrait of the Artist, what are quotes where Joyce uses the stream of consciousness technique, and is it different from interior monologue?


Then at the
door of the castle the rector had shaken hands with his father and mother, his soutane
fluttering in the breeze, and the car had driven off with his father and mother on it.
They had cried to him from the car, waving their hands:
—Goodbye, Stephen,
goodbye!
—Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!
He was caught in the whirl of a
scrimmage and, fearful of the flashing eyes and muddy boots, bent down to look through
the legs. The fellows were struggling and groaning and their legs were rubbing and
kicking and stamping. Then Jack Lawton's yellow boots dodged out the ball and all the
other boots and legs ran after. He ran after them a little way and then stopped. It was
useless to run on. Soon they would be going home for the holidays. After supper in the
study hall he would change the number pasted up inside his desk from seventy-seven to
seventy-six. (James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man
)



Several good
examples of stream of consciousness occur at the very beginning of the novel; the
excerpt above is one of these. href="http://narrative.georgetown.edu/wiki/index.php/Stream_of_consciousness">Stream
of consciousness
is a type of the older technique of interior
monologue, which is a character’s inner conversation with themself. The writing in
stream of consciousness may exhibit a loose style with
fragmentation of expression and without standard grammar, syntax, and punctuation. The
identifying characteristics of stream of consciousness are fairly simple and easy to
grasp:


  1. Stream of consciousness provides a
    representation of a single character’s consciousness.

  2. Consciousness may include thoughts or impressions or
    perceptions.

  3. Consciousness may respond to external
    stimuli or to internal stimuli.

  4. Consciousness may be
    represented by fragmented and/or disordered and random thoughts, perceptions, or
    impressions.

The excerpt above displays some
of these characteristics. There is a randomness to the expressions. They begin with
Stephen’s parents saying their farewells, then jump
illogically to a scrimmage on a football field (i.e.,
soccer or rugby), where a run down the playing field turns
into an even more illogical idiomatic and metaphoric run
after the boys who will soon be going home from school for the holidays.

True to its origins in psychology under the hands of psychologist
William James (elder brother to Henry James of literary fame), the stream of
consciousness in the excerpt is somewhat logically connect through what is called
free association, the change from one thought or train of
thought to another due to a mutual or related association of thought. In the excerpt,
the second jump from a random thought about a run to a second random thought about a
metaphoric run has the logical connection of free association through the idea of
running after in relation to the other
boys at Stephen’s school:


readability="6">

the ball and all the other boots and legs ran
after. He ran after them a little way and then stopped. It
was useless to run on. Soon they would be going home for
the holidays.



Here is a
second example of a free association type stream of consciousness in which
nice takes the narrator from focusing
on nice expressions to focusing on
nice
mother:


readability="7">

That was not a nice expression. His mother had
told him not to speak with the rough boys in the college. Nice mother! ... she had put
up her veil  … and her nose and eyes were red. … She was a nice mother but she was not
so nice when she cried.


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