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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
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Shevek Wanders:
On the day that Shevek learns of the revolution in Benbili, he is overcome with emotion and flooded with thoughts, and he decides to adventure out into Nio Esseia and walk about the city. As he does, the narration uses stream of consciousness to reflect his state of mind, shedding light on both his wandering train of thought about life and Ioti politics and his immediate observations about the streets and shops around him:
Did the money buy the politeness, as well as the postcards and the map? How polite would the shopkeeper have been if he had come in as an Anarresti came in to a goods depository: to take what he wanted, nod to the registrar, and walk out? No use, no use thinking this way. When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, be one.
The two streams—philosophical musings and spontaneous observations—inform one another as Shevek experiments with participating in Urrasti life. This merging of the personal with the philosophical is emblematic of the novel as a whole, with its goal of showing the connections between the fundamental, physical forces that make up our universe and the societies that we build and live our lives in. The present moment of walking into a shop and buying a postcard is intimately connected to the capitalist system that made the interaction possible. The ideology is responsible for the shop in the first place; without the notion of property, there cannot even be a transaction. The existence of the transaction then gives rise to norms of politeness, which may be one step removed from propertarian thought but is no less reliant on it. Shevek is able to hold both ideas in his head with no walls between them and see the interrelation. The stream of consciousness allows for free movement between the two ideas within the narration.
Related Themes:
