Previous
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
Part 8
Explanation and Analysis—The Arabian Sea:
In Part 8, Rushdie narrates the pilgrimage of Ayesha and her followers to the Arabian Sea. After various trials and obstacles, the group arrives at last. Rushdie describes their arrival with a single long, descriptive sentence rife with imagery:
The tide was in when the Ayesha Pilgrimage marched down an alley beside the Holiday Inn, whose windows were full of the mistresses of film stars using their new polaroid cameras,—when the pilgrims felt the city's asphalt turn gritty and soften into sand,—when they found themselves walking through a thick mulch of rotting coconuts abandoned cigarette packets pony turds non-degradable bottles fruit peelings jellyfish and paper,—[...]—and through the beachcombers, clubmen and families who had come to take the air or make business contacts or scavenge a living from the sand,—and gazed, for the first time in their lives, upon the Arabian Sea.
In this sentence, Rushdie uses vivid visual imagery to describe the final passage to the sea. The absence of commas in some of the clauses of this sentence lends the description a stream-of-consciousness feel that invites readers inside the exhausted minds of the pilgrims. The broader syntax, meanwhile, matches the act of pilgrimage. Rushdie's description takes a long, complex, and difficult route to arrive at its final words: "the Arabian Sea." The visual imagery in this passage also helps clarify the setting of the pilgrimage as distinctly modern, full of "non-degradable bottles" and a "Holiday Inn," which clashes with the mythic nature of the story of Ayesha's pilgrimage. Broadly, Rushdie uses intense visual imagery and stream-of-consciousness narration to immerse readers in the conclusion of the pilgrimage, for all its exhaustion, detail, and contradiction.
Related Themes:
