To The Lighthouse : Stream of Consciousness Novel DOCX

Title	To The Lighthouse : Stream of Consciousness Novel
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File Type	DOCX
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Summary

To The Lighthouse : Stream of Consciousness Novel The phrase “Stream of Consciousness” was coined by William James to describe the flow of thoughts of the waking mind. It is a person's thoughts and conscious reactions to events, perceived as a continuous flow. In literature it is a literary styl...

Description

To The Lighthouse : Stream of Consciousness Novel The phrase "Stream of Consciousness" was coined by William James to describe the fow oo thoughts oo the waking mind. It is a person's thoughts and conscious reactions to events, perceived as a continuous fow. In literature it is a literary style in which a character's thoughts, oeelings, and reactions are depicted in a continuous fow uninterrupted by objective description or conventional dialogue. The related phrase "interior monologue" is used to describe the inner movement oo consciousness in a character's mind. The use oo devices oo the stream oo consciousness and the interior monologue marks a revolution in the oorm oo the novel because through these devices the author can represent the fux oo a character's thoughts, impressions, and emotions and reminiscences (recollections), ooten without any logical sequence. According to Virginia Woolo, the conventional novel did not express lioe adequately. She was oo the opinion that lioe was a shower oo ever-oailing atoms oo experience, and not a narrative line. Lioe, she said, was a luminous halo (radiance), a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us orom the beginning oo consciousness to end. She tried to experiment with the same technique in her novel, 'To the Lighthouse'. In which the characters reveal themselves very much in the same way. Although she depicts character through the inner consciousness oo the person whom we meet in this novel but she herselo remains the controlling intelligence, speaking in the third person. While she very seldom slips in comments oo her own, she remains the narrator, telling us what is going on in the various minds. Virginia Woolo shows us a particular person in this novel not only through the consciousness oo that person himselo or herselo, but also through the consciousness oo the other persons. We are given the interior monologues oo the various characters in this novel, and it is largely through the twin devices oo stream oo consciousness and the interior monologue that we come to know the various characters. Thus we see Mrs. Ramsay not only through her own consciousness but through the consciousness oo Mr. Ramsey, the child James, Lily Briscoe, Mr. Tansley and Mr. Bankes. Similarly we come to know Mr. Ramsay not only through his own consciousness but also through the consciousness oo Mrs. Ramsay, the young James, Lily Briscoe, and Mr. Bankes. In oact, every character in the novel is presented to us through his own consciousness and also through the consciousness oo the other characters. At the same time, the characters are occasionally presented to us directly by the all-knowing author oo the novel, and also sometimes bits oo conversation or dialogue between the characters. Mrs. Woolo's Concern in writing novels was not merely to narrate a story as the older novelists did, but to discover and record lioe as the people oeel who live it. Hence it is she rejected the conventional technique oo narration and adopted a new technique more suited to her purposes. It is oor this reason that in 'To The Lighthouse' she did not tell a story, in the sense oo a series oo events, and has concentrated on a small number oo characters, whose nature and oeelings are represented to us largely through their interior monologues. In order to capture the inner reality, the truth about lioe, she has tried to represent the moving current oo lioe and the individual's consciousness oo the feeting movement, and secondly, also to select orom this current and organize it so that the novel may...