MB UNIUD

The stream of consciousness is a narrative technique used to convey the thoughts of a character as they really come in his/her mind. It is very difficult to be understood because of the lack of connectors, punctuation and common logic links. I will take some example from Molly's stream of consciousness in Joyce's Ulysses. Analysing the extract the reader must be very careful, because if he gets lost between the incomprehensible thoughts, he can't find a logic or a connection again. As a matter of fact the elements that give coherence to the text are not only logic operations or links (analogies, differences, causes and effects) or themes (love, religion etc.), but also figures of speech (for example assonance, anaphors - "yes"), the significant (for example the word sun makes Molly link a reflection about atheists to her husband Leopold) and past experience that the reader does  not know. Another sudden interruption can be determined by the speaker sensory feelings or events that are taking place while he is thinking and that may have no connection with his reflection. The reason why coherence is difficult to find is easy: first of all the character has no addressee, so he needn't be so clear, and last but not least, every person has his personal "way of thinking". Somebody may be influenced more by logical and rational links in his reflections (and so stream of consciousness), other people by assonance and language, others may not end their considerations because they are too influenced by external events. And so it may be very complicated for a reader who uses reason with a  personal logic, to try and understand another people's mind, thoughts and connections.

The interior monologue represents a character's thoughts, but filtered by the narrator. An example of interior monologue is the last sequence of The Dead, a short story from Joyce's Dubliners. In the scene, Gabriel Conroy reflects about what has happened that evening and how it has changed his point of view and consideration of his life. The sequence (as many other interior monologues) does not represent a problem or a puzzle for the reader who can easily understand what is happening. That's why the narrator (a third person narrator) doesn't report thoughts exactly as they crosses the mind of the character, but it adds connections and explanations or digressions if the concept is not clear enough. Of course it does not represent reality, because it appears as a logical and rational argumentation about a theme (based on cause-effect relations) instead of a more realistic stream of thoughts, but it has the advantage of being clearer and convey the character's opinion about a subject more exactly.