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Situational Irony
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
Key Examples in Absalom, Absalom!
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis:
The style of Absalom, Absalom! is characterized by Faulkner's use of stream of consciousness. The book features multiple unreliable narrators who present their version of events as a continuous flow, and the narration is marked by sensory impressions, free association, and personal reflection. Because of this stream-of-consciousness technique, most sentences in the novel are very long and meandering, with some over 1,000 words long. The opening lines of the novel reflect this style more generally:
From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that—a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes [...]
Related Themes:
