Write a composition, a composition about stream of consciousness.

[train of thought analysis]

Drawing on some writing methods of stream-of-consciousness novels,

Focus on exploring people's hearts,

A monologue describing a person's heart.

[Problem solving process]

First of all, what is stream of consciousness?

Stream of consciousness is one of the misleading terms used by writers and critics. This is misleading because it sounds very specific, but it is as varied and even vague as romanticism, symbolism and surrealism. To be exact, stream of consciousness is a phrase used by psychologists. It was created by American psychologist william james and refers to the continuous flow of human consciousness. James believes that human thinking activities are not composed of separated and isolated parts, but a continuous "flow" containing various complex feelings and thoughts.

It is obviously extremely useful to use the term stream of consciousness to describe the psychological process, because as a rhetorical term, it has a double metaphorical meaning, that is, "consciousness" and "stream" have metaphorical meanings. This idea provides a theoretical basis for novelists to show people's inner world by means of stream of consciousness and complete the narrative of novels by showing the conscious activities of characters. The stream of consciousness in novels refers to the imitation of the continuous flow of characters in the narrative process of novels. Specifically, it takes the character's conscious activity as the structural center, revolves around the seemingly randomly generated and loosely logical conscious center on the surface of the character, interweaves all the scenes of the character's observation, memory and association with the feelings, thoughts, emotions and wishes of the character to be expressed, and truthfully and accurately describes the flow process of the character's consciousness. In the history of modern western novels, such as James Joyce, Adeline Virginia Woolf and Faulkner, they are all famous for their successful use of stream of consciousness.

Second, the stylistic features of stream-of-consciousness novels

As far as stylistic features are concerned, stream-of-consciousness novels often break the normal temporal and spatial order of traditional novels, because they express the endless feelings and thoughts of characters with the structural center of their consciousness activities, and usually complete the transformation of narrative content with the help of free association, thus producing a long-span leap in the past, present and even future. The vagaries of characters' psychology and thoughts, the overlapping of plot paragraphs, the interweaving and overlapping of real scenes, feelings and impressions, memories and yearning, and the multiple displays of symbolic images and psychological monologues often make the narrative seem confusing. Therefore, in the face of this kind of text, it is the key for readers to grasp the consciousness center that runs through the characters' multi-level feelings, impressions and psychological images as accurately as possible, and to find clues about the flow of characters' consciousness from it.

The most commonly used techniques in stream-of-consciousness novels are direct inner monologue, indirect inner monologue, omniscient description and dramatic monologue. Direct inner monologue is a kind of monologue. To describe such a monologue, there is neither the author nor a hypothetical audience. It can directly show the consciousness to the reader without the author telling the reader this and that as an intermediary. In other words, the author, together with his leading words such as "He said" and "He wanted to" and his explanatory notes, has disappeared or almost disappeared from the page. Indirect inner monologues show some unspeakable materials of an omniscient author, as if they flow directly from the consciousness of the characters; The author provides readers with a guide to reading monologues through comments and descriptions. The omniscient description means that an omniscient writer participates in the process of describing the spiritual content and consciousness of characters, and describes this consciousness with traditional narrative and description methods. Dramatic monologues go directly from characters to readers, without the intervention of the author, but there are a group of imaginary audiences. The depth of consciousness it expresses is limited, unlike the inner monologue without reservation.

Reading Adeline Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, we can have a real feeling about the stream-of-consciousness novels.

As the name implies, the main content of this novel is that the characters in the novel try to board a lighthouse. It is located on an island a few miles from where they gathered. This point is emphasized at the beginning of the novel: \ "Yes, of course, maybe tomorrow will be fine. Mrs Ramsey said, "But you must get up early in the morning. She added. Mrs Ramsey likes to tell her son James that if the weather is fine, he can go to the lighthouse. Ten years later, James finally reached the lighthouse for the first time. By this time, Mrs Ramsey had died. The novel is over now. Of course, this is not an adventure story, and there is no description of the shipwreck storm in the novel. Just as the background of the novel-an island in hebrides and the characters and their behaviors in the novel are symbolic, the lighthouse is also a symbol. This symbol does run through the book with great power. It symbolizes people's spiritual encouragement and the contrast between the chaotic and fragmented life experience and the ideal truth or beauty that people pursue spiritually.

Mrs Ramsey is an active advocate of visiting the lighthouse, but her husband strongly opposes it. After she said, "Sure, maybe tomorrow will be fine", her husband replied, "But", and his father went to the living room window and said, "Tomorrow will not be fine". Therefore, this basic scene is symbolic under the confrontation of two forces. It is the expression of the inner contradictions of the characters.

Adeline Virginia Woolf explored the significance of their reactions from one person's consciousness to another's consciousness, from one group of people's consciousness to another group of people's consciousness. Following their thinking, he carefully arranged and designed the image that appeared in his mind, which carefully and clearly explained that he gathered some selected symbolic events together until a layout was completed. In order to discuss the significance of these events, memories and associations, and to impress the significance of going to the lighthouse, the nuanced novelist used another symbolic scene as the corresponding basic scene of the novel. These two scenes are opposites. When people discover these symbolic meanings, only by grasping the consciousness, intuition and perception of the crowd can they perceive their existence.

There are a lot of rational traditional narratives and descriptions in this novel, but the author often uses inner monologues, which makes the novel always seem to be in the consciousness of the main characters. Adeline Virginia Woolf said in her article "Modern Fiction", "When atoms fall on our brains, let's record them in the order in which they fall; Let's describe every look or every little thing engraved in our minds, no matter how insignificant and fragmented these patterns are on the surface. " This is the best description of her method. Her stream of consciousness is more traditional than Joyce and more coherent than Ulysses. However, even in her works, some incoherent elements are still added in a planned way, deliberately making the reason and meaning of the story appear vague, forcing readers to think in order to find answers and understand the works.

Many images in stream-of-consciousness novels have multi-level connotations that traditional novels do not have, and the addition of stream-of-consciousness theory also makes the narrative process of novels confusing and unconstrained. In the process of showing the inner consciousness of the characters, the characters are getting closer and closer to us, and we seem to see the trial in our hearts and hear the cry in our hearts.