Stream of Consciousness A Literary Technique

Stream of Consciousness First assumes that the human mind is a constant stream of thoughts, associations, memories, reactions, and reflections As a point of view, it attempts to mimic that stream of the inner workings of human minds

Stream of Consciousness Sensory details/perceptions are jumbled with conscious and half-conscious – Thoughts – Feelings – Memories – Associations – Reactions

Stream of Consciousness creates the effect of a chain of reasoning based on association can seem: – sloppy – disorienting – random – choppy

Although it seems confusing, chaotic, and disjointed… details are specifically selected the character’s (or narrator’s) psychological associations determine – the order of ideas and details – what is and isn’t revealed

Elements of Stream of Consciousness Subjective, associative perspective Long passages of meditation/self-reflection Sentence fragments Run-on sentences Several compound-complex sentences Reliance on imagery and sensory details

From Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf …looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”—was that it?—“I prefer men to cauliflowers”—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on the terrace—Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days.

From “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield It's all the fault, she decided, as the tall fellow drew something on the back of an envelope, something that was to be looped up or left to hang, of these absurd class distinctions. Well, for her part, she didn't feel them. Not a bit, not an atom... And now there came the chock-chock of wooden hammers. Some one whistled, some one sang out, "Are you right there, matey?" "Matey!" The friendliness of it, the - the - Just to prove how happy she was, just to show the tall fellow how at home she felt… Laura took a big bite…