The interior monologue
At the begin of the 2oth century, writes gave more and more importance to the subjective
consciousness and understood that it was impossible to reproduce the complexity of the
human mind using traditional techniques, so they adopted the interior monologue in order
to represent the unspoken activity of the mind before its is ordered into speech.
Main features:
●it is a verbal expression of a psychic phenomenon, the stream of consciousness
●frequent lack of chronological order
●the narrator may be present
●the logical form may be lost or lacking
●the action takes place in characters’ mind
●the speech may be immediate
There are two kinds of interior monologue: direct and indirect.
Indirect interior monologue reflects the character's thoughts, but it still maintains a distance
because it's still narrated, even if it's narrated by the character. Direct interior monologue
delves deeper into a character because the thoughts are presented directly.
1. The indirect interior monologue
●The narrator is present in the narration and the character’s thoughts can be
presented directly or by descriptions and comments in order to guide the reader into
the narrations;
●The character is fixed in the space, while his consciousness moves freely in the time:
in character’s mind everything happens in the present and the concept of inner time
shows the relativism of a subjective experience.
2. The interior monologue with two levels of narration
●The interior monologue could have two different levels of narration, by always
using the 3rd person narration, one is external (2nd level of narration) to the
character’s mind and the other one is internal. ( in the Ulysses
)
3. The interior monologue with the mind level of narration
●Character’s thoughts flow freely and they’re not interrupted by external events.
●We can find this type in the final chapter of the Ulysses,
in the monologue of Molly
Bloom.
●this type of interior monologue is characterised by flashback, timeless dimension and
free flowing style.
