STORY AND Dee DISCOURSE Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film | | by SEYMOUR | (CHATMAN Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDONso oe ne i the 198 Cre Urey Prey gy Ca vey esa ped wn pron oa Bas Re rete eg ee Seam yee seamen ree seit ht te a Mt "Sct rm Te Fur Cae City by Das Ling. copyright © 26 Dor sing erate mamas metas emcee Gane tn a cf Ee masts i ia ser Simmer ioe see ayo Congres Cain i Fabeton Dla (Geeta ng purpose oo) ‘Shy and dice ‘ncadestibiogrphicl references and inde ./) ane Oe moron name” CSO BaNearielis 1037 245 S68116 For Elaine4 piscoursE: Nonnarrated Stories Snes bacome he moter tongue. ‘Olver Goldsmith, ‘The Got Nate on very narzative-so this theory goes—is a structure with a content plane (called story’) and an expression plane (called "discourse". Having examined story in Chapters 2 and 3, we tum othe other half ofthe narative dichotomy. The expression plane isthe set of narrative statements, where “statement” Is the basic component afte frm ofthe expression, independent lof and more abstract than any particular tanifestation--that i, the expression’s substance, which varies fom att to art. Acer. tain posture in the ballet, a series of fl shots, a whole para- graph in a novel, or only-a single word-—any of these might ‘manifesta single narrative statement Thave proposed that nar- native statements are of two Kinds—process and stasio— corresponding 10 whether the deep narrative (not the surface linguistic) predicate i in the mode of existence ) or action, (D083) Cosseuttng this dichotomy is another Is the statement di- rectly presented tothe audience or is it mediated by someone— the someone we cll the narator?Diect presentation presumes kind of overhearing by the audience. Mediated nartation, on {heother hand, presumes a more or lest express communication from narrator to audience. This essentially Plato's distinction between mimesis and diegesi,*in modern terms between show: Ingand teling. Insofar as theres teling, there must bea tl, narmating voice. “The teller, the transmitting source, ig best accounted for, 1 think, a a spectrum of posites, going from nareators who are last audible to those who are mest so. The label axed 0 1. Tse trea eve by Glen Geet in “Fontes dC mais 8030 DISCOURSE: NONNARKATED stoRIES 147 the negative pole of naratorhood is less important than its reality in the Spectrum. T say “nonnarrated”: the reader may prefer “minimally narrated,” but the existence ofthis kind of transmission is well attested ‘The narrator's presence derives from the audience's sense of some demonstrable communication. If it fools iti being told something, it presumes a teller. The alternative is "direct witnessing” ofthe action. OF course, even inthe scenic at like rama nd the bale, pure mimesis san ilusion. Bu the degree ‘of possible analogy vais. The main question is how the iusion is achieved. By what convention does a spectator or reader cep the idea that i is “as if” he were personally on the scene, though he comes toi by siting in a char in a theater or by turing pages and reading words. Authors may make special cefors to preserve the illusion that events “teraly unfold be- fore the readers eyes,” mostly by restricting the kinds ofstate- ments that ean occur ‘To understand the concept of narato’s voice (inuding its “absence”) we need 49 consider three preliminary isbues: the interrelation of the several parties tothe narrative tansaction, the meaning of “point of view ands relation to voice, and the nature of acs of speech and thought asa subclass ofthe clas of ‘acts in general. These topics form a necesary prolegomena *0 the analysis of narrators voice, upon which any discussion of| narrative discourse rests. Real Author, Implied Author, Narmtor, Real Render plied Rede, Narate ‘That tis essential not to confuse author and narator has be- ‘come a commonplace of literary theory. As Monroe Beardsley angus, “the speaker of teary work cannot be identified with the author—and therefore the character and condition of the speaker can be known by intemal evidence alone-—unless the ‘tuthor has provided a pragmatic context, ora lam of one, that connects the speaker with mse”? But evenin such a context, 2 a Ace (New Yok, 159), . 20. CE Wale Gen, “Authors, pete, Readers Moc Rees Chie Ena 1 O98, 3508 en Tilo The Tae tr eo a 199),148 stony AND oiscounse the speakers not the author, but the “author” (quotation masks of “as iP), or better the “author”-narator, one of several possible kinds, Thaddition, there isa demonstrable third party, conveniently dubbed, by Wayne Booth, the "implied author" Ashe writes [the el author aeates no simply ania, impersonal ‘mun in gencal but an imp ven of Masel that erent ‘fom the implied authors we mest noes mens othe» Whee ‘we call this ped author an fil ube or adap he rm recery Bite by ice mothe sta ac an thatthe plete the reader gets ofthis presence sone ofthe ators ‘mos! important flecs. However impersonal he may ty fo be, ht ‘Rader il nerably conics pcs te cial sabes Soper Soars agate eae Sanne oman Pectcr see Sete nocmee set possse Serre aoa aan eee fee ioe eae oe sonnets meeps See SSS ee Sey ee ence — iscounst: NONNAREATED sronES 149, liable narrator” (another of Booth’s happy coinages). What makes a narrator unreliable f that his values diverge stskingly from that of the implied author's; that is, the rest of the narrative—"the norm of the work'—conflcts with the nar- ‘ators presentation, and we become suspicious of his sincerity ‘or competence to tell the "rue version.” The urweliable naratar {is at virtual odds with the implied author, otherwise his unsela- bility could not emerge ‘The implied author establishes the norms ofthe narrative, but ‘Booths insistence that these are moral seems unnecessary. The ‘norms are general cultural codes, whose zelevance to story we have already considered, The real author can postulate what- ever norms he likes through his implied author. Tt makes no ‘mote sense to sccuse the real Cline ar Monthelant of what the implied author causes to happen in Journey 40 the Erd of the [ight or Les jeunes Filles than to hold the real Conead responsible for the reactionary attudes ofthe implied author of The Secret ‘Agent or Under Westers Eyes (or, for that matter, Dante forthe (Catholic ideas ofthe implied author ofthe Dione Comedy). One's moral fibre cannot realy be “seduced” by wily implied authors. (ur acceptance of their universe is aesthetic, not ethical. To confound the “implied author,” a structural principle, with a ‘certain historical figure whom swe may or may not admire mor ally, politically, or personally would seriously undermine our theoretical enterprise." ‘There is always an implied author, though there might not bbe a single real author in the ordinary sense: the narative may have been composed by committe Hellywood films), by a dis parate group of people over a long period of time (many folk ballads), by random-number genesstion by a computer, of whatever” ‘The counterpart ofthe implied authori the implied reader— not theflesh-and-bones you or1 siting in ou ving rooms read fT ering deci of gon in Su Sin. th” Reps (Spel 1970), 1-7. Seman ths ha he pod fa wl asthma ce seta and ne a ep ng Si Thonn name scan Pein tet180 stony ano oiscounse ing the book, but the audience presupposed by the narrative isl. Like the implied author, the implied render is always prevent, And just as there may or may not be a narrator, there ‘may of may not bea marie.” He may materialize as &chatac- terin the word ofthe work for example, the someone listening to Marlow as he unfolds the story of Jim or Kurtz. Or there may be no overt reference to him a all though his presence is fle, In such eases the author makes explicit the desired audience stance, and we must give him the benefit ofthe doubt if we ae to proceed at all. The narretee-charate is only one device by which the implied author informs the ral reader how {0 perform as implied reader, which Waltnechasung to adopt. The hamatee-character tends to appear in narratives like Conrad's whose moral texture is particularly complex, where good is nat easily distinguished from evi. In naratives without explict nat- rate, the stance ofthe implied reader can only be inferred, on ordinary cultural and moral terms, Thus, Hemingway's "The Killers” does not permit us to assume that we too are members of the Mob; the story just wil not work if we do. OF course, the real reader may refuse his projected role at some wltimate level—nonbelievers do not bocome Christians just to read The Inferno or Paradise Lost. But such refusal does not conta the imaginative or “asf” acceptance of implied readership nec essary tothe elementary comprehension ofthe narrative. It ig ap necessary to distinguish among naratees, implied readers (parties immanent to the narrative), and real readers (partes extrinsic and acidental tothe narrative) as iis among areator, implied author, and real author. The "you" or "deat reader” whos addressed bythe narrator of To Jones no more ‘Chatman than isthe narrator Hensy Fielding, When I tent the fictional contract I add another sell I become an im- plied reader. And just as the narrator may or may not lly hi Self with the implied author, the implied reader furnished by the real reader may or may not ally himself with 2 narratee. In Tom 7. The tem ft cine 0 a 1 no, by Gaal Prine, “Noes ‘omar Caeonzeton of Beton Nara’ * Gort G9), 10-18 ‘Soah's “posted ede” nwa eal a np ieader, biscounse: NonNARRATED STORIES 151 Joes oF Tristram Shandy the alliance is reasonably close in Les Liaisons dengeeuses or Hear of Danes the distance is great, “The situation ofthe nareatee is parallel o that ofthe narrator: he ranges from a fully characterized individual to "no one,” ‘Again, “absence” ot "nmarkediness” is pat in quotation marks: in some sense every tale implies a listener or reader, just as It lmplies a teller. But the author may, for a variety of reasons, leave these components unmentioned, indeed, go out of is ay to suggest that they do not exit, ‘We can now diagram the whole narraive-communication situation as follows: arate tent Bor | IBN art Narate)maied |g Real The box indicates that only the implied author and implied reader are immanent to a narrative, the narator and narratee are optional (parentheses) The real author and real reader are futside the narrative wansacion as such, though, of course, indispensable to it in an ulsimate practical sense 1 shall ake up the “nonnarrated” forms in this chapter and reserve the discussion of covert and overt narrators and ar ‘ates forthe final chapter. Point of View and Its Relation to Narative Voice Its the task of narative theory, ike any theory, to deal with the ambiguities and undartes of terms passed ven to it, To understand the concept of narrators voice induding the case here one is “not” (or eninimally) present—wwe must first ds- Linguish it from “point of view,” one ofthe most troublesome of etical terms. Is phurisignificaion must give pause to anyone ‘ho wishes to use tin precise discussion. At leat three senses fan be distinguished in ordinary use @)iteral through someone's eyes (perception); (©) figurative: through someone's world view (ideology, conceptual system, Welioschaun, et);152. stony ano viscourse (© transfered: fom someone's interest-vantage (character Zing his general interest, prot, welfare, wel being, et) ‘The following sentences wil lustrate these distinctions: (@} From John’s point of view, atthe top of Coit Tower, the panorama ofthe San Francisco Bay was breath (6) John sai that from his point f view, Nixon's position, though raised by hs supporter, was Somewhat es than (© Though he didn’ realize it at the time, the divorce was 2 disaster from John's point of view. Inthe frst sentence, "The panorama of the Bay” is reported as actually seen by John; he Hands at the center of a half-crde of vision. Let us call that his perptual point of view. In the second, there is no reference to his actu physical situation in the real world but to his altitudes or conceptual apparatus, his way of thinking, and how facts and impressions are stained ‘hough it We can call that his cept point of view. In the third, there is no reference to Joka’s mind at al, either to per ceptual or conceptual powers. Since John is unaware of the ‘mentioned consequences, hes not “seing,” in ether the actual or the figurative sense, the term then isa simple synonym for "as far as John is concerned.” Let ws cll this his infeest point of view. What is confusing is that “point of view” may thas refer to an action of some kind-—perceiving or conceivingor to 2 pasiestate—as in the third sense ‘Now texts, any kind of text, even ordinary conversation, may ental one or any combination ofthese senses. A simple descrp- tion of an experiment or an explorer’ account of» new island ‘may convey only the literal perceptions of the author, but it ‘may also entail his Welinschawung, or his practical interests ‘A philosophical treatise on abstract issues does not usually en tal perceptual point of view, but may express quite eloquently the author's personal interests in the mater, along with his ideology. ‘When we tum to narrative feds, we find an even more com plicated situation, since as we have seon there Is no longer & Single presence, as in expository essays, sermons, political speeches, and s0 on, but two-character and narator—nat to DISCOURSE: NONNARKATED STORIES. 153, teal gid ho: Bch of ney der once ee ee ee meee Pace eres eae ae er aes orremeerrertets ea are a a tae! ee ar ope Fravlpet cer ped okay ape related Seca va in an ence Soa geraan acer onsen aemee eres casa witaetanSs Pesto tndasran een ee saci atneueteapemen ens inte ser Se ee ee ie ncaa fone Say once ea ocea cots fon as poeta sont ae bees cao ee a ae et eee ree seer Feat Sue es a a {vee of he sate perspective ofthe spake (he meatn, wil ames TRE pty cont teceaseem Sai ae Soy ml Sierras SS Sein er ere ree ae See Soon eee ee aa sant nce he rts teeing 1 Dun has prataed Ble’ emotion tht she Sabi teloe chk of bel and er anton al meno ary hd uy the tenable wenden Eanes bt he a ‘o's She wheat pupa serine ty hh (Ged te ara tthe "Nt soto of Ue). Eine uy indeed {Seistoatin sentiment un mune” pal ton” "ory gue oat ‘gare mtn her ebay154 stony AND b1scouRSE Jack fall down the Bil” (in the fist case, the narrator 8 pro- Aagonist, in the second, witness). Or the point of view may be assigned toa character who i not the narrator then the separate narrating voice may or may not make itself heard—"Mary, oor dar, save Jack fall down the hil” versus "Mary save Jack fall ‘down the hill” Or the event may be presented so that itis not lear who, fanyone, perceived it or perception is net an issue): “Jack fell down the hill” The "camera eye” names a convention (an “illusion of mime- sis") which pretends thatthe events just “happened” in the presence of a neutral recorder, To call such narrative trnsmis- ‘Sin “limited third person” is wrong because it species only the point of view, not the narrative voice. I is necessary 10 dlistinguish between “limited third person point of view voiced bya covert narrator,” “limited third person point of view voiced by an overt narrator” and 0 on. Perception, conception, and interest points of view are quite independent ofthe manner in which they are expressed. When, ‘we speak of “expression,” we pass from point of view, which is only a perspective or stance, to the province of narcative voice, the medium through which perception, conception, and ‘everything else are communiested. Thus point of view isin the Story (when its the character’), but voice is always outside, In the discourse. From A Porit of he Artistas a Young Man: “A few moments later} he found himself on the stage amid the garish gas and the dim scenery.” The perceptual point of view f8 Stephen's, but the voice is the narator's. Characters! per~ ‘ceptions need not be articulaed—Stephen is not saying to him- Saf the words "garish gas and dim scenery”; the words are the narrator's. This isa narrator's report. But in ““He shivered a litle, and I beheld him rise slowly a6 if a steady hand from above had been pulling him out ofthe chair by the hair” (Lard Tim), not only the voice, but the perceptual point of view isthe narrators, Marlow's, not fin’. And in "Coifin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it with his plume skewways. Dull eve: ola tight on his neck, pressing on ' bloodvesee! or something. Do they know what dhey eatt out here every day?” ("Hades,” Ulysses), the perceptual point of iscounse: NonNARRATED sronIES 155, ‘iow is Leopold Bloom’, and 9o are the words, but he is no narmtor. Hes not telling nanatee anything. Indeed, he isnot speaking even to himsell the convention argues that he i dic rectly perceiving the coffin andthe nag’s dull eye, and nothing, more, There no narator. Thal these cases the character perceives: his senses are d- rected outward upon the story-world. But when that perception is reported, as inthe fist two examples, there is necessary presupposed another ect of “seeing” with an independent point ff view, namely that of the narrator, who has "peered into” the characte’s mind (metaphors are inevitable) and reports its contents from his oun point of view. Can this kind of point of ‘view be called “perceptual”? The word sounds strange, and for {good reason. It makes sense to say that the characte is iterally perceiving something within the world of the work ("homo- ‘iegetcaly,” a8 Genette would say). But what the narrator reports fom his perspective is almost always outside the stony (heterodieges), even if only retrospective, that is, temporally distant. Typically, he is looking back at his oven earlier peccep- tion-as-a-characer. But that looking back is @ conception, 1 longer a perception. The completely external narator presents an even more purely conceptual view. He never was in the World of the works discourse-time fs not a later extension of story-time, He didnot "perceive" in the same direct or diegetic tense that any character did. Literally speaking, he cannot have “seen anything in that other world. ‘Thus.he use of tems lke "view" and “see” may be danger ‘ously metaphorical. We "see” issues in terms of some cltural ‘or paychological predisposition; the mechanism is entirely dif- {erent from that vwhich enables us to see cfs oF automobiles. ‘Though itis true that preconceptions of various sorts affect cur swiely physiological Vision too (people may not see what Is literally before thei notes because they have compelling per sonal reasons not to), there remains an essential diference be- fhveen perceptions and conceptions. Further, the narntor's is second-order or heterodiegetc conceptualizing abut the story 1 opposed to the Brstorder conceptualizing of a character ‘within the story. These distincions most ceavly emerge where156 stony ano piscounse the two conflict where the narrator is operating under a cearly alferent set of attitudes than those af the character. Then the narrator's conceptual point of view (except when he is unre liable) tends to override the characte’, despite the fact that the latter maintains the center of interest and consciousness. An example is Conrad's The Seet Agent: the narrator is clearly "unsympathetic to Verloc. Or, more precisely, the character has 4 conceptual point of view undermined by the narrator's man- ner of depicting it. Verloc’s ideology (such as itis) reeks of indolence; the narrator carefully picks words to 30 characterize it, For eample, Verioc does not simply stay in bed, he “wale lows" in it. But the nareator (ike all Conrad's narrators) ison {the side of vigorous achievement. Similarly, he tll us that Ver loc “remained undisturbed by any sort of aesthetic doubt about his appearance.” From the narato's conceptual pont of view, implicitly communicated, Veroe’s physical messiness is repre- hensible and a dear analogue to moral sloth and politcal dis honesty. Or consider the difference between Verio's and the narrator's attudes toward female psychology. Vere’ wnplea- sant encounter with Mr. Vadinie brings him home ins tower ing rage. Forgetting that his wie is mourning the death of her brother, for which heis responsible, he s disappointed that she doesnot soothe him, Yet, immediately, he realizes that shes "a woman of few words.” But his notion of his relationship with her, his conceptual point of view, is paraphrased in the nara- to's superior dition: [Winnie's] reserve, expressing in 2 way ther profound confidence in each othe, introduced a the same time ‘a certain element of vagueness into their intimacy.” ‘Though the "profound confidence in each other” isthe naar {or's expression, not Velo’, whose verbal style we know to be less elegant, it can only be Verloc’s sentiment. His complacency, ofcourse, tums out suid Disparity between the character’ point of view and the nar- falor’s expression of it need not entail ionic opposition. The narrator may verbalize newtrally ot even sympathetically what (for reasons of youth, lack of education or inteligence, and 0 fon), the character eannot articulate. This isthe whole structure! Principle of James's What Maisie Knew. Maisie’ uncertainty DISCOURSE: NONWARRATED sTORIES 157 bout when next she will visit her mother is expressed thusly "Mama's eoot, however, had its tum, this te, fr the chi, of appearing but remotely contingent, ..»” Clearly these are not phrases in Maisie’s vocabulary. We accept them only be- cause a sensitive litle girl might have feelings that somehow matched the nareato’ elegant terme. That i we can "tana Inte” into more chldlike verbiage-—for instance, “don’t expect tobeat Mama's again very soon.” The diction is sanctioned only by the convention of the “well spoken narrator.” “Point of view” expressing someone's interests is even more radically distanced since theres not even a igurative “seeing.” ‘The subject may be completely unconscious that events work for ‘or against his interests (well, suocess, happiness). The Ident fication of interest point of view may follow the clear specifics tion of the character's perceptual and conceptual points of view. ‘Once they are established, we continue identifying vith his Anerests, bya process of inertia, even if he is unaware of some: thing. In The Amassdors, the narrator speaks of Masia Gos ltey’s powers of “pigeor-holing her fellow mortals": "She was as equipped inthis particular as Stether was the reverse, and it made an opposition between them which he might well have shrunk from submitting 10 ihe had flly suspected I.” The narrator informs us of aspects of Maras character that Sirether does not know, yet it makes perfect sense to say that the sen- tence is “from his pont of view.” The foes of attention remains on him, Maras tits are significant only in their implications for him—even though he isnot aware of them, ‘Access to character's consciousness Is the standard entree to his point of view, the usual and quickest means by which we come fo identify with him. Lesoning his thoughts insures an intimate connection. The thoughts are truthful except in cases of willl self-deception. Unlike the narator, the character can only be “uneeliable” to hime [At the same time, interest point of view can be established ‘quite independently. The point of view may residein a character who is “followed” in some sense, even if there is na reference at all to his thinking, If Jack and Peter are in the Bist scene, and Jack and Mary in the second, and Jack and Joseph in the158. stony awo oiscoUSE third, we identity with Jack simply Because he isthe one con tinvally on the scene. This has nothing to do with whether or not we care for him on human or other grounds, ‘The notion of interest pont of view ls not very meaningfully applied to an external narrator. Hie only Interests fo get the ‘atrative told. Other sorts of interest arise only i he i or was also a character. Then he may use the narative itself as vindl- ‘ation, expation, explanation, rationalization, condemnation, or whatever, There are hundreds of reasons for tling a story, but those reasons are the narrator's, not the implied authors who is without personality or even presence, hence without motivation other than the purely theoretical one of constructing the narrative itself. The narrator's vested interests may be 50 marked that we come fo think of him as unreliable “The diferent point of view usually combine, but in important and interesting cases, they do not, Consider “autobiographical” for first-person narration, as in Greet Expectations. The prosgo- nistas-naratar reports tings from the perceptual point of lew of his younger sell. His ideology onthe other hand tends to be that of his older sel. The narrator is older and wiser for his experiences. In other narratives the ideology may not change; the narrator may exhibit substantally the same tts as charac terized his ease self. Where the narrator isa diferent person than the hero, he may present his own ideology, against which hn judges his hero's actions, ether overtly, asin Tom fone, oF covery and inferentally, a in The Ambassadors, The narator say utllzea perceptual point of view possible to no character, for example when he descbes a bitd'seye view, or a scene With no one present, ot what the character did not notice. Point of View in Fie Films endow narrative with interesting new possibles of point of view manipulation, since they Rave not ane but two, fotemporal information channel, visual and auditory (and in ‘the auditory, not only voices But music and noises). These can ‘occur independently (sound tack with black screen or fall pic- ture with complete sence), o they can be combined in various ways. The sound may be filly synchronized, as when ip move- DISCOURSH: NONWARRATED STORIES 159 iments coincide with the speaker's words, or unsynchronized, 235 when no one’s lips move yet we hear a voice: dhe convention fs that we are heating unuttered thoughts (or the like). The Situation may be rendered even more complex by having voice ‘over and voice-on running concurrently. It may even be the same voice, asin Robert Bresson’ Le Journal d'un curé de cam pagne where the voice-over represents the priests dary com- "menting on the very action in which we ere watching him play bis part ‘The simplest film situation presents a bare visual record of ‘what happened “ut there," as in "The Killers.” Though it may move, the camera must shoot from some single position. This position need not coincide with the perceptual point of view of ny character, The whole movie may pass before us in pure visual objectivity, the camera identiied in no way with any character, Whatever identification we fel for the hero issues feom thematic empathy, or perhaps merely from the fact that he ‘Bon camera more than anyone else. Ihe wishes to underline a character's point of view, how- ever, the director has two options. The actor can be s0 placed, in the fame as to heighten our association with him. For ex ample, hisback or side profile may appear on an extreme margin ff the screen. As he looks into the background we look with him. The other (or"montage”) convention uses a simple match: cut if in the fist shot the character locks af screen, to right or left or front or back, and there follows a cut to another setup Within his eyeshot, we assume that he has in fact seen that thing, from that perceptual point of view. And vee have seen it with him. (Or vice versa: we may see the thing fist and see- ‘only cut tothe character looking a) ‘Even so, tis not always clear whether we have seen the object separately from the character, conjintly with him, or through him. We are sure only ofa perceptual sympathy with him. In Citzen Kane, Thompson, the reporter, is tying to discover the secret of “Rosebud” in the banker Thatcher's memoirs. The camera focuses onthe lowering statue, then moves down tothe inscription WALTER PARKS THATCHER. The curator, Berth, says offcamera, “The directors ofthe Thatcher Memorial Library160 stony AND osscounse have asked me. .."—at which point the camera tacking back, reveals Thompson in the foreground, Bettha at her desk. In context, the viewer feels ave, amusement, and slight depres. sion at this spectacle of plitocratic selFadltation The Back. ward movement ofthe camera to reveal Thompson, looking up at the statu, suggests that he feels this way 100, Ofcourse that is an inference; we see Thompson, just at we see the statue But we see the statue with him: his perceptual point of view ls dominant. This edd phenomenon character who fs both object and mediator of our vsion—oocursregulaly i the visual raretive arts, It is much rarer in verbal namaive since we do ‘ot normally observe a scene through a narrators eyes atthe very moment that hes pat af the scene. As a perceptual object fn the picture thatthe narrator is drawing, he cannot also be perceptual subject. Evenif they are the same person the cher: fer-narrator, as in “The Pit and the Pendulum’ ov "Tse Tel Tale Heart,” the narrating half describes the situation of the otherhalf-self-as-charactr after the fac, and hence as dbject, not subject, The gap between the time ofthe dscourse-teling and the time of the story-events is crucial. Most fist person accounts are retrospective But fe wishes, the director ofthe fim can completely dene ‘ty our vision with the character's, positioning his cameras lens not only alongside the character, bu inside, literally behind his eyes. This is the so-aled subjective camera technique, m= Ployed intermittently in many films, but continuously in only ‘ne (as far 26 know), The Lady in the Lake, The actor playing, {the hero caried the cameza strapped to his chest.‘The fm ree Stricts the point of view in obvious ways: for example by elimi: nating any glimpse ofthe character’ body unless he i ooking in a mirror, by showing extremities of his body at the edges and comers ofthe sereen (much distorted, of couse), by ving, characters who speak to him lok directly into the camera, and by leting approuching objects, ike fists, Bock out the lens ‘The camera can make very fuid changes in point of view be= «cause of its ability to move abruptly or smoothly in any direc: tion, The shift in pint of view can be effected By a simple cut lorby atrack or pan of the camera in a vista glistndo, case DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES 161 ‘example occurs in Fellini's La Dole Vita: Marcello, the hero, a= tives at his friend Steiner's apartment. We see only the door, ‘hich opens. Then Steiner’ wife looks directly ino the camera, s0 we know thatthe shots subjective, that the perceptual point of view is Marcel's, that we ae seeing through his eyes. We ae caried along into the room: Marello is greeted by Steiner wo is alo looking straight into the camera, Bt then Steiner tums his eyes to the right, and the camera ina graceful and perfectly smooth movement pans left to reveal Marcello emer Ing on the left side ofthe fame. A transition has been made ftom a subjective to an objective shot, and from now on Mat cello i fully visible atthe party. An analogous sliding change ‘of viewpoint sometimes occurs in modemist verbal narratives 4p Mrs, Dalloway, a perception may shift from one character to another or to the narrator's report even within the bounds of a single sentence Narrator’ end Character’ Spech Acts A final bit of ground-dearing before I take up the central topic of these next two chapters, namely, the transmission af the story, with or without an intervening narrator. We must fist consider the nature of accounts of speech, thought and physical action in genera, since in verbal naraive, these are all the audience ean utilize to decide whether itis @ namator ora character speaking thinking, or acting, A convenient bass for such distinctions is provided by a ee~ g2nt development in philosophy called “speech act” theory This {3 not linguistics in the strict sense. Its not concerned with the grammatical composition of sentences in a language, bt rather with their role in the communication situation, as actual acts by speakers. We owe the theory to the English pi losopher John Austin. © Roughly, what sentences intend 9 do What Austin calls thee “Hlocusonary” aspect—is tobe sharply distinguished from theit mere grammatical, of “locutionary’ aspect, and from what they da in fact do, thei effect om the hearer, or "perocutionary” aspect Thus, when a speaker atte 10 John Assn, Hs De hgh wth We ew York, 192,162. stony ano oiscounse a sentence in English (or any natural language), he is doing at Teast two, and possibly thre things: (I) he fs making that sen- tence, that is, forming it according to the rules of English gram- mar (“locating”), @) he is performing a quite separate act fn saying it, an act which might equally be performed by nos- linguistic means ("ilocuting” i). For eample fhe says “Jump into the water!” he is forming (1) the lcution "Jump into the water” according to the standard English rues fr imperative Constructions, ete. At the same time, he is performing (2) the locution of commanding, an at that could slo be communi- cated by making jumping motions near the edge of the pool. I hhe accomplishes the intention ofthe locution fhe suceeds in setting his interlocutor to jump into the pool, he has achieved (3) the perlocution of persuading. ‘One illozation may ental de variety of locations and pe locations. An illustrative table forthe locuionary act of pre- tng follows. Lecation ection Posie Prtons “John wil doubless predict teach pol persuade Ps probable at Beccire John ail wimatly ina beersy” ‘ghten "fs insanity amuse sey tn we obs geting ty” ‘That is, any given ilocuton, like praitng, can be couched in any one of a numberof locations, using different syntactic and lexical elements. And it can give rise to a wide variety of per- locutions in an addressee including no effet tall, depending, ‘upon the context "The theory of speech acts provides » useful tool for distin- 1 Wii Alon n Ply of Langue Engen Cie N19, proyecto et eer Meany ae Oa ade puri wmcuncg smut sping aang mpg. mG DISCOURSE: NONNARKATED STORIES 169 sig tng emer i ie Sa de erg ee sears ee Scotts isan decyl ee Sorcha me stand ba acetate eset ag et which Rappenedthieen yours ago, Sd wh sal deste Soe temenranya martin Bitctel anon hay ua cata ccrtregreeinns oer eh teag far Soma sps guatreredeemsasen EXgiin i dane ere Hee gins or py oe ating, if ae Deri han lv tn la atin Jesse ee ama Fever el bet eee cae Tes eg i of nt a DSN aor rte ae Sint hy ep ee SSPE RGA a pe tac ay canes om He was ajc Sod cou, yt senses, cet et oh ot ih met soe ahaa tee regia paraiso spe ny hp rend nena ae ecto emm tare Esottatketremachag depecae hae aaa memes SSE ESES rome oon gaat png164 story avo onscourse significant qualities or tats attlbuted to Fyodor. For the nara- tive, its not important that “we” knew or remembered hin, but simply that he was so known and remembered, The surface featutes, the verbs “known” and “remembered,” translate into asin the narrative statement. “We used to call him and: downer” and “He hardly spent a day of his le on his own state” are similarly “disguised” for the narrative. The imp tant point for story isnot that “we” called him “landowner, but rather that he was usualy socalled, that that was one of his attsbutes, The sentence as sentence is cast as an event; that is itslocutionary aspect. But llocutionarly, ts function is descrip “Owing to his gloomy and tragic death,” on the other hand, ‘doesnot function descriptively. It is rather a speech act inform: ing us of the event of his death The purely narrative statement would be something ike Hedi, glomily and tragically. (Lam not, ofcourse, presuming to rewrie Dostoevsky, but simply to Iighlght the narrative thrust ofthese sentences.) ‘Other speech acts in this passage geveraize or opine, for in stance, “yet one prety frequently tbe met with” and “he was fone of those senseless persons who..." The second may seem to take the form of identifaton, say "There exists « lass of sensoless persons who...” But it differs in an important way from a clear-cut identfiation such as "There was aman named Fyodor Pavloviteh Karamazov.” A tre identification is always Integral to the story and cannot be questioned by a reader, since to do 60 isto prevent the nareative from proceeding, to deny its very fabri. The author must be granted, by convention, the right to posit all hose entities and actions necessary to ls nar~ fale, But statements that are the narrator's opinions do not have thie warranty They refer to his view ofthe real world, not to the inner world of the story, and the reader can immediately recognize this departure from the necessities of the story ‘world When the naeator says that there are persons who are 12. “Opinag” an inte of. Haber “rn” “our” of ‘pons nde (i, tan. Rabat Mie, p. 3) ern” tae mls he ecu ter card he eal wo ose nd ‘Elum suhocy DIscoURSH: NONWARRATED SrORIES 165, both senseless and yet capable of looking after ther afi (note present tense) and that sich fellows are frequently met with, he fs presumably eferrng tothe eal woed of nlneteenth-century Russa Since t bears on the outside word, oping, inthe strict speech-act sense, makes an apparent trth-caim; one can ret- onably ask whether the narrator i right or wrong on indepen ent grounds. Buti would mot be meaningful € ask whether ‘there was ar was not & person named Fyodor Pavovitch Kara mazov. A statistical survey of Russian personality types of the nineteenth century is a logial possiblity, but since no one dais that Fyodor ever existed, it s impossible to judge whether frnot he was vicious. (We shall return to this question in Chap ter when we take up “commentary.”) ‘The spesch acts of characters dlifer logically from those of narrators, Even when a character is teling a story within the rain story, his speech acts always inhabit the story rather than the primary discourse Like his other acts, they direty interact With other characters, not with the natratee andlor implied teader, So there ia wider range of Ulocutions open to him than to the narrator, When Clarissa Harlowe writes I beg your ex- cuse for not writing sooner,” the purported locution is apolo- ‘sing. When her mother writes "Icannot but renew my cautions ‘on your master’s Kindness,” there sa warning. And 30.0n. Now fof course a narztor can-—and Fllding’s and other authors’ nareators often do~apologize and warn, but only and neces- fanly about their narmative encounter with the navratee. They ‘an only apologize or war about the nanativeitell In Hook U ‘of Tom Joes, the naeator performs the speech act of inventing, bt the intention clearly tefere to the narrative: “Though we have propery enough entitled this our work, a history, and not a life; nor an apology for le, as Is more in fashions yet we Intend in it rther to pursue the method of those writers, who profess to disclose the revolutions of countries than to imitate the painful and voluminous historian.” Cleary intending and ‘other such speech ats ae ancilary toa narrator's central speech fact, namely sarating. Contrary, narrating can never be achar- acter’ central function without his thereby becoming a narrator, Inence leaving the story and entering a secondary discourse.166. story avo oiscounse Characters use language #9 argue, to make love, to catty on business, to rhapsodize, to cogitate, to promise, to make cont mitment, to le, and so on, always within the boundares of he world ofthe story.” Hiaving examined the preliminary areas—the parties of narea- tive discourse, the meaning of point of view, end the nature of speoch and thought as ilocutionary acte—we can proceed {0 the vocal manifestations ofthe naratr, in order, soto speak, ‘of advancing degrees of naratorhood. We must recall that our basic concern is discourse atures tht combine in various ways, rather than fixed genres (lihough a rough generic clasifcation 4s a composite of features may be possible ater isolating the features). By discourse feature | mean a singe property of the narrative discourse, for eumple the self-reference of the nat= ‘ator by fist person pronoun, ofthe use or avoidance of time summary. Variety among discourse styles can then be ac- ‘counted for in terms of motures of independent features. Nar- ‘ative theory has sullered from too great a reliance on categories, 0 thatthe fll discoursive completes of individual narratives are sometimes missed because they do not “ft.” “Nonnarrate Representation in General ‘The negative pole of narrator presence—the pole of “pure” smimesis—is represented by narratives purporting to be un- touched transcripts of characters’ behavior, At the Positive pole (of pure diegess, on the other hand, the narator speaks in his proper voice, wses the pronoun “I” or the like, makes interpre= {ations, general or moral observations, and so On. The non- or minimally-mediated narrative records nothing beyond the specch or verbalized thoughts of characters, Such minimal marks of narrative presence or fags a8 "he thought” fr “he said” may be deleted: this effect is usually called free style. But even ifthe tags are employed, they are purely con- ventional separate paragraphing. could as easly indiate change of speaker. 13. An aa ofthe spent as of crc can be found a Rha ‘hn “erro A Senn Cay ‘ern ipa ate Nw Yo, 33), “ones DISCOURSE: NONWARRATED STORIES 167 ‘To say that only the speech or thought of characters i imi tated is not to imply that the mimesis is simply in its unde lying semantics. Mikhail Bakhtin, in an important theoretical work, shovrs that quotations are really duplex, On the one hhand, ke other conventional signs, they are oriented toward thee signification, just a if they appeared in ordinary text ke newspapers, textbooks, and so on. On the athe, they are "ob Jeetvized,” understood “not only. from the point of view of [thei object, (but become (themselves) objects} as... charac- teristic, typical, or picturesque” that i, reflective of the charac: ters. Thus each speech or thought of a character alway’ pres poses rao “speech centers and two speech uities”—even ifthe Implied author does not admit narrator. An “ultimate semantic authority, which requires a purely objecteriented understand ing”—the implied author~"eust in every Iterary work, but i isnot always represented by the diect authori word.” The Implied authors foreign intention does not penetrate inside the objected (speech takes rather ars whole and without alleing the seme oe fone subnet am a dt he pe wk nother bjectevirted meaning, Iisa if he [speech] not swe the fetta thas become ah objec it i ken perton whe oes Sout fe busines and’ not swe ‘of Go fact athe te, ‘rsche ‘Theoretically, «copied text i the minimal case, The discourse pretends merely to transmit already written material, like et fers ora character's diary. At one remove is quoted dialogue, whose only necessary assumption is that someone has tan: Scxbed the speech of the characters, All we ae given isthe wait- fen version of a sound recording, The presupposed device is stenographer. We cannot avoid the implication that somebody has done the transcription, but the convention ignores the act and assumes that the expression sa pure mimesis, Stl, lgical- Iy, theres a transformation, from the modality of oral o that of witen speech. 24. Mth an, Prion of Doe’ Fr, RW. Ret Ann ‘sr 19) pps sh the sated "ajc ft aaa ‘onthe unnecessary metaphor fr Bah ccems168 stony ano oxcounse ‘Somewhat more distant from the pure objective pole are non- speech actions bodily and other movements and inernal pro- ‘cesses, thoughts, felings, sense impressions. Among the late, the convention is that whats going on in the mind ofa charac. ter can be copied out in words, This presupposes device more ‘complex than a stenographer—one that teads thoughts--not ‘only verbal ones, bur perceptions, sensations, and wnarticulated feelings, and puts them into linguistic form, ‘As fr external physical actions, narzative, unlike drama, can ‘ot dicetly imitate physiat movements. When an actor sits clown, he imitates with his body the character's movements. It ise, not the playvright, who embodies the chazacter In verbal narrative, however, "Joh fll nto the chair” or Jon lounged about” give us an interpretation, obviously a narator’s. THis {logically true even ifthe term is as neural as ean be—"sat” rather than “Tounged,”" "Sat" implies a neutral depiction, namely that other, more loaded terms have been avoided. That too can be called interpretation: “John [simply] eat down; but by convention neutral words for actions tend to suggest a con- scious avoidance of narrator mediation. The bare deseription of physical action is felt to be essendlly unmediated, without covert thematic interpretation. The reader must infer themes fom a bare account of purely external behavior. The verbs of Hemingway's "The Kilers"a standard example of sheet se portage, convey only overtly visible actions strenuously avoid fing even a hint of inner behavior. “Nick walked wp the street beside the cattracs and turned atthe next arelight down slde-steet,” or “Nick walked up the dark steet tothe comer lunder the alight, and then along the car-tracke to Henty’s eating house,” or “Ole Andreson said nothing,” We musta ways guess at what Nick or Ole is thinking, Further, sentences separately describing the setting for its town sake tend to be avoided. Hemingway's story mentions the faruacks and the arclight only because they frame Nick's actions: they are spatial maskers of his movements. They are mentioned leanly and purposively, ticked away in the syntax, never—as Barthes says about laubert’s descriptions of Roten-— Bloriouslyirelevant tothe plot, never “set” descriptions. DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES 169 Inanother impersonal narrative style, that of certain nowoener ‘romans, description is widely prevalent, infact Becomes domi- rant. Jean Ricardou’ has shown that in some of these novels the wating seems to take over from the author (or implied autho), becoming autonomous, or in his word srptural (com pare Bathes's notin of sepuble narratives). Rather than star Ing with some previous conception and puting it ito words, the convention is thatthe pen traces the lineaments of things fn its own, Things depicted in thi fat way are emptied of Inuman significance; they become mere functions ofthe writing rather than vie versa. Philippe Sollers’ Dame gets fated on the color red. Ricardou’sL’Obseraative de Canes goes from t= angle to triangle. And so with works of Claude Mauriac, Alin Robbe-Grilet, Claude Ole, and others Nonnarate Types: Writen Records In a progression from minimal to maximal narator-media- tion, from features that signal the least o those that signal the greatest audibility of his voice, "already written documents” Should be examine first. Of all the forms of teary narrative those that pretend to be constituted by found letters and diaries Jeast presuppose a narator. If we insist upon an agent beyond the implied author, he can only be a mere collector or collate. His power isthe trivial one of having collected (and perhaps cated) the letters or journal forthe typesetter. He isnot even responsible for direct reports of characters physical actions, but presents ony their Iteral writen artifacts. The sole purported Change i from handwriting to print But he may not even allow himself a stenographer’ options about punctuation and s0 on His presence can only be made known by means of footnotes fora preface. The ralactear of Lacos’ Les Lions dangeruses els us that he has changed the names of persons referred to inthe letters andl asks permission to delete whatever seems super fluous. The editor of La Neuss writes about the problem of dat- ing Roquentins early pages, the physical condition af tne mans Script, and the interpretation of certain words, He identifies 15, jan Redo, Pins nnn a Pai Nc, 2.170 store ano oiscounse characters (the “Sel-Taugh” man) and gives a bibliographical reference to Roquentin’s reading. ‘But if the external narrators reduced or nonexistent, can we not posit some kind of internal narrator Is it not the cae that most epistolary oF dary narratives are constructed to fame @ narration by correspondents or diait? Its, why are they not Simply a subelass of rst-person or autobiographical narrative? ‘Though letters oF dlary-entees may and often do marat, they reed not. A sory can be cast in epistolary form in which every Sentence expresses only the then-and-there relationship be- tween the correspondents. In that instance, it fs no less "dra. ‘matic’ than ifthe interchange were through pure dialogue ‘marked off by quotation marks. A recent novel by Mark Haris, Wale Up, Stupid, is ofthis order. The letters ofthe hero concern matters of curent practical importance to hint they are not reports of what has happened since the last letter. The eader ‘must pce that out for Nimself ‘And even where eters contain a great deal of narrating, we ‘may find many here-and-now elements. In Pama there is 2 more or less constant movement between narrations and other [Kinds of speech acts proper to the story requests, commands, laments, questions, and Soon ‘Pamela's fist speech acti announcing her present intentions “Ihave great trouble, and some comfort, to acquaint you with.” ‘The mode is then switched to narrating, as the topic of tis announcement is presented in summary preterit: “The trouble fs, that my good lady died ofthe iliness T mentioned to you, and left us all much grieved forthe oss of her." Then desing 4 character “for she was a dear good lady, and kind to all us her servants." After more narrating, we ae given an asessmen! ‘ofthe mother’s situation: . who have enough todo to main- tain yourselves..." This assessment Is not narzative (dis- coursive) but actual (Siege), thats, an estimate ofthe present State of afar inthe story-world. Pamela isnot telling het father and mother a story they do not know, but rather considering ‘heir actual situation with them, weighing its import. "Another important characteriic unlike gentine narators, the correspondent or dirist cannot know how things vil ulti DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES 171 matey turnout. Nor can he know whether something is impor- tant or not. He can only recount the story's past, no is future He can only have apprehensions or make predictions. Suspense derives from our curiosity about whether or not his hopes of fears materialize, Pamela expresses her apprehensions, and later we discover, from further letters, what ultimately happens. (OF course, an interval must elapse between the events re ‘counted and the appearance of the letter or entry in the lary But these intervals tend to be much shorter than those between the story-time and discourse-tme of genuine retrospective ac- ‘count, for eample an autobiographical novel Moments of com- Position appear as ull amidst the storms of the story. Pamela ‘sometimes cannot even enjoy that respite; he letter ls regularly Interrupted by some onslaught by Mr. B. Richardson captures the immediacy of the event by having her add a postscript 10 letter “have been seared ott of my senses for just now, as Twas folding up this letter in my late lady's dressing room, in ‘comes my young master! Good sir! how I was frightened!” ‘Thus, epistolary narative is an enactment, an unmediaed narrative text—although secondary mediation is always possible and indeed generally occurs. But itis incorrect or atleast ove Simplified to argue, as Jean Rousset does that characters in epistolary narratives "tll the story oftheir ives a the same time that they live them,” thatthe reader “is made contemporaneous with the action,” that he sees the character’ ie “atthe very moment when it is lived and veriten by the character” The ‘moment of writing, yes, but the moment of ving, no Just afer it, The act of weting i always distanced from the correspon. dent’ life, be it ever so minimally. The comespondent has in- traded upon the “iver.” Even ifthe delay between the event and its transcription is very brief—if the events are "seized while hot” (sisi a chaud as Rousset pus i) is stil a delay. [kis precisely this delay that separates epistolary and dary nat ratives from tre story-contemporancous forms like the interior monologue Further, epistolary and diary narratives are aunts: they 16, Jean Rous, "Le roman par ete,” Frm Pas, 960, Po172 sony aND piscourse strongly presuppose an audience. Inteior monologue, on the other hand, has no conscious sense of audience. Iss expressive, ‘ot communicative, of the character's thoughts. “The diary narzatve dfs from the epistolary in its narate, ‘The narate of letter isthe addressed correspondent, the nar ratee of a private diary is usually the writer himself, though the diary may ultimately be intended for someone else's eyes (Noeud de nperes, The Key, Abe Sache). The diarist may narrate events for his own edification and memory. But he may aso be work: ing out his problems on paper. Stil, he stalking to himself “Most ofthe entrios in Roquenti’s diary in La Nausée are of an expository, not a narrative cast 1 doe’ thin the istoran’s ade ie much given to psychology Sin our wrk we have to ony seh sentiments the whole 0 ‘which we give gene ils sich Ambion sd Interest. When narrative does appear, it offen serves the function of example: ‘The thing that I zarely think rove of small metamorphose a ‘muse in me witout ey roeng Hand then one Hine day a ‘erable revoluton ‘kes place Ths what han given my ie ch {ey incoherent aspect. Fr istance, when {Ie rance, there were ‘fotot people who std Tet fra whist. And wen fauideny cane ack afer am year of waving they stl coud ala whim Taee ‘ysl with Mercer agin in ht oie of that French factory who euigned afer the Petrou busiest lst yon, Mercer wae BONG 10 ‘Bengal ade presed me to go with hm Now wonder Why." ‘Film offers some interesting twists on the dary convention. ‘The best example I have seen is Robest Bresson's version of Georges Bernanos’ Le Joural d'un curd de campagne (1950). Especially atthe beginning, brief shots illustrating the quality 1, Trane by Loyd Aone. 1 tne nel cng Rayon Dang "he ary eenpeet acento [ee the pos) hare ha fhe ee orn ove 231) spt ot ofthe ay wing op aye Fra ar Br, ‘Nb le itp a) Drgot ate ht hem oa emo es Ini ese Te tal image af eer seri «few tte wor a Sblcse nancy ao py ving ema Sa DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES 173, ofthe curt’s bleak life in his tiny vicarage are interlaced with shots of his hand writing the journal (his physical and mental disiess reflected in frequent biotings) At the same time his ‘oven voice-over reads what the hand is writing in the diary. But the diary can continue to “speak,” by the voice-over effect even ‘when the camera leaves it, and returns to the action, “back then,” which it recounts. Ai such moments the actions that we see in the screen’ usual "present tense,” ae the visual coun- terpart of what we hea, in the past tense, asthe cut'sofsreen voice speaks the diary, The words are kept, yet also trans- formed, by a routine cinematic convention, into their come- sponding fashbacked images. And certain oder eects are also possible. At one point, accompanying the visual image of his hand wating the dary, his voice-over breaks off and says that he must write down immediately whats happening. But as the voice-over describes that curent action, the visuals show the auction itself, not his hand waiting in the dary. The account of “eis suppressed by “ite” itsel ‘Another interesting elect is tized several times to show that the mind of the curé i unable to grasp what is being sad 10 him (not only ness but naiveté plagues him: he says, plain tively, that he will never understand human Beings), The action proceeds inthe completely dramatic mode, that, the narrative ‘voice-over i stil for instance, as the curé (as character) talks With the countess. The camera focuses on him ashe lstens 10 her, though itis her voice we hear, Then her voice becomes ‘weaker, though still audible, and the curé's dary voice-over Starts speaking conjointly with it, though louder, explaining why, af that moment in the story, he could not understand what she was saying, ure Speech Records A step further, the wanscription of speech presupposes not only a collator but a stenographer. The record of speech can be that of a single character, the classic dramatic monologue, of ‘oftwo or more, that, unmediated dialogue ‘Dramatic monologues subsume that a character speaks to ai-{74 srony ano oiscouRse other, silent, character. The essential limitation is that the speaker's central activity not be narration, since in that case, he ‘would be a narator, and the scene would be merely a frame {ora secondary narrative, An example of rather pure dramatic monologue is Dorothy Parker's story "Lady with a Lamp,” the record of the speech of an unnamed character to her fiend Mona, who is suffering a nervous breakdown, whom she o5- tensibly tees to comfort but only manages to make worse. The sory iin the character’ det fee speech (that, in the pres- lent tense, with first-person pronoun reference and without ‘quotation marks or dialogue tags lke "she said”): Wel, Mona! Wel, you poor sick thing, you! AK, you lok so ite hd ite ad ite yo de Sg ea Thats sth you do=go ad ok so Sle ad pal abaya have the eat fold you And ough to scold you. Mona” Ok yes, {should too: Neve ting ane Know you were (he expression “I should s0 too” implies that at this point ‘Mona has protested that she should not be scolded. Her verbal reactions never actually appear in print but are inferable from ‘what her friend says) 1a mistaken, th’ all I simply though hat afer—Oh, now, you ‘ont have todo tat You never ve fo my youve sory tT ‘onder (Mona's apology must interupt the speaker at “after.”) At the fend the speaker has s0 upset Mona that she becomes alarmed Ierself at the reaction: ‘Mora, do! Mona, stp it Pease, Mona! You must talk ke that, you masta say such tng. ‘Mona has perhaps threatened to do herself in.) In desperation, the speaker alls to Mona's mad, ale, the change of inteloeu- tor being indicated by italics 18. Therein pot ning ate nol” pony merely be cause ot tue enpla e he 2 So ‘St dee prensa Wt ie oe Son Ni), 2s "The ama ncoge 6 character abet 2 {iad ign se tte ret nie caro tye pan hese fs on” Bn eer tema mec Ugo phenomenon other Sapa 1). DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES 175 Ede, Oh, Ee Ea, 1 tik youd ter gt Dr. Briton onthe phone, tn hi ocd an gine ie Moria somebing fo utr 1m ara shes got ers pe ‘Obviously, the dramatic monlogue isso special an effec that there must be some overwhelming reason for is employment, In "Lady with a Lamp” a character's moral and psychological ‘obtusentss and posible malice is supported bythe technique of keeping he interlocutor—hervictime unheard. "Most dramatic monologues lave the intelocutor’s comments completely out of the text, but there is. short story by Katherine Mansfeld called “Two Tuppenay Ones, Pease,” in which the interlocutor is given a simulaerum of voice through dots of ellipsis: Lady... You've heard about Teddy’ you? {aay He's got his. Hits goths. Now whats? Whatever an ‘thei low Miss of mel Fronds? {sy norte ena Major ag. Fea Be ‘linet Ob, no, my dvs, is something mach higher than ‘The friend is allowed an intonation and nothing more, ae she turned avay from us and we could only catch the interrogative {intonation at the end of her utterances ‘Though pure dialogue between characters ie more common than dramatic monologue, its apparent structural simplicity is an illusion. Mach could be said about dilogue asa source of rareative information, but I shall iit myself to questions of inference and taxonomy. Stores that are uniquely dialoguie or rely heavily on it equi the implied reader todo more inferring than other kinds, oF ifnt more at least a special kind. Speech act theory clarifies the istue. To a greater degree than normal the reader must divine for himself the lloculonary force ofthe Sentences spoken by characters to each athe, that, what they “mean” as a fanction of what they doin the context ofthe ac- tion, since there are no direct reports of that doing. Iti a if we were supposed to supply, metatextually, the correct verb176 srony ano oiscounse tag—"complained,” “argued,” “pleaded, ”"—to characterize the speech act. Consider fr example the following sentences fom Hemingway's "Hil Like White Elephants ‘The gil was looking of athe lie hls ‘Thy wete white i the sun and the country wa Bown and dry. "Shey lnk ke whit lpn she sad ve never sen one” The man dene ber. “No you would’ ave." “Light have” the man sid “Just because you sy would’ have doesnt prove snything” Ilocutionarly, the girl fst poetics or the Uke. The man seems to be admin ignrence but the later context tells us that he is rejecting her fight of fancy. She then crits or titles mn. He In turn defends himself and challoiges her authority to make judgments about him. “A.crucal element inthe representation of dialogue i the iden tification of the speaker. The least obtrusive marking s simple position: the ordinary convention is that speakers altemate fom paragraph to paragraph. In the passage from “His Like White Elephants," we know tht the gll 6 saying "No, you woulda’? have” because itis her “turn”—hers are the odd paragraphs. If the text ad read "They lok ke white pants” she a, “ve never seen ne,” ‘Themman drank is beer "No, you wouldnt have," we would assume that it was the man who accused the gil of lacking visual imagination rather than vice versa ‘We make these inferences about speech acts as we make all ‘our inferences in reading-in terms of our ordinary coded knowledge ofthe world and our expectations about hutnan be- havior in Society as we know it. Thats why pute speech report narsatives would be particulary dificult to understand across ‘reat calturl divides. OF all narrative theoreticians, Bakhtin has been most con- ceed with questions of dialogue. Though he often used the word in a very expanded sense (for example, the "dalogue” ‘ofthe author with socit)), he also studied the ordinary int siege sitution closely. He recognized a wide range of elects DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED SrORIES 177 possible in the dialogue, for example how Dostoevsky’s char fcters are intensely precccupied with their nterlocutrs’poten- tal replies. Obviously, a great deal ofthe tension in the Hem- ingway passage above stems from our sense of the pregnancy fof each speech forthe interlocutor. "T've never seen one” 18 ‘leasy a chip-on-the-shoulder remark: the gel promptly knocks ito Her rejoinder in tur is phrased to soit a countereoin- ter, The couple ace caught up in one of those endless wrangles {that intimates wage s0viioutly because they know each others ‘weak points and struggle for the last word (Quite diferent is what Bakhtin cals the “servile” or “cring- Jing” attitude, the "timid and bashful stifled ery of defiance” 59 ‘common in Dostoevsky. Prom Poor Folk ive inthe Kichen, or, more carelly speaking, here next the lute a ite rom (nd T would lke to pont ou ht ur chen fs'deun and tight ery gos ote) sal nook humble lite foeer Well 0, ts any ble commer. “The “halting speech and . ..intereuptions (and) reservations" characterize Devushkin’s “sideward glance” at his epistolary Iinerlocutor Varenka Dobroselova, reflecting his nervousness bout her potential disdain. "The other person's words as it twere wedge their way into his speech, and although they are in realty ot there, thle influence brings about radical reorpa- nization of that speech.” ‘Such dialogues may go inward, the two “intrioctors” 2c- tualizing different facets of the same personality. Golyedkin, in The Double, has daiogues with an alter ego. His own tone Is ‘one of hollow independence and indtfrence ("he's his own tan, he's allright"), designed to reassure himself The double he himself creates, “an alder, more confident person,” begins by comforting him, but ends (usurping the funetion of ironic narrator) by turing Golyadkins own blustering words against fim. Similar effects occur in Notes from Underground, The It, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamar ‘When we know more about textual and semantic analysis, it may be possible to develop viable taxonomies of dialogue types. 2, tah, Dey ts, pp178 stone anv oiscounse Usefull, if impressionisticaly, Maurice Blanchot has already proposed a three-way distinction. His exemplars are Malraux, James, and Kafka, In Malraux's work dlalogue serves the func: ton of genuine discussion, inthe traditional Socratic sense. His characters, despite thelr passionate intensity, become “at mo- ments of arty... suddenly and naturally, the voices of the treat ideas of history.” They discuss because they want 0 find fhe truth, even ifthe pressures ofthe me prevent thea from reaching accord. The characters of James, on the other hand, ‘arry on dialogues ina spn of idle conversation, “around the tea in an old ladys cup” (as Hawthome put #). But there may suddenly emerge in such a conversation an "extaoedinary ex- planation in which the protagonists understand each other, wonderously, through a hidden secret which they feel they have no right to know, communicating for the moment around the incommunicable, thanks tothe reserve they surround them - selves with and the mutual understanding that permite them to speak without seeming to speak,” Kafka's characters, fr thelr part are doomed forever t0 talk at cross purposes, past each other: “the characters are net really intriocuors; speeches ean- rot really be exchanged, and though resemblant in surface meaning they never have the same import or the same reality: some are words above words, words of judgment of command- ment, of authority or temptation; otters are words of ruse, Aight ecelt, which keep them from ever being reiprocated.”2 Sguy [Narrative theorists have used the word sldbguy to describe another sort of unmediated presentation ofa character's speech, ‘Ging such works as Virginia Woolf's The Waves and Faulkner ‘As T Lay Dying * Is the transfer of the term to narrative struc: ture useful? Te ita viable narrative feature? Let us recall the 4 se nh re ge’ er Sip Retin aaron ase ae ee py erg ees a See ee ee SCENE ERR aang teers DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES. 179 ‘meaning of “soliloquy’in the drama, The standard examples— Hamlet's and Macbeth’s~contain (atleast) the following, fa (0) the character does infact speak (in the cinematic version, by a technical tick, his lips remain closed but we hear his vole) (2) either he i alone on stage, or if there are others they show by their demeanour and actions that they do not heat im (8) he traditionally faces the audience; (@) bathe does not necessarily name the audience; the sec- ‘ond person pronoun or the imperative is addressed either tohimself or, informal apostrophe, to someone not present (ye Gods,” or the tke; (6) thus the audience is not addressed but rather overhears the character's address to himself or o someone not pres: ent: (@ the style and diction ofthe solloguy tend to be very ‘much of pce with the character's ordinary dialogue; thus ‘fhe speaks in a formal and poetic manner to the other characters, that i the style of the solloguy, too; there is ‘no attempt to modify his language to show that it is an inner phenomenon: (0) the content often constitutes an explanation of or com- ‘ment on the characters situation Features (1) and @) are obligatory, the rest optional but sual. "Now in what sense can passages in nareative be called solilo- ques? The Waves and As I Lay Dying do in fat exhibit some of ‘these features.” In The Wes characters are said to speak; the tag “be (she) said” is usually present, and passages atbuted to each character are always in quotation marks. Thus, the style fs diret tagged tagged” means marked by the verbum dicen) ‘aR alc tly asumed” whee ter menage dose not ‘Stowe the rene la uence. The carter Set range ne atch pig ong roa ‘Bis LE Bomng incor in tong The Wis 8 an interior smonaloge novel (athe Sam of Concosns Tic?” PL, (SiS pete Sscusten of nteor monolpes blow180 sroR® avo oiscounst “Susan has passe us" sai Board. “She has passed the too house lor wih her handhcrchit sewed nt a ball She way not cyan ‘bur or eyes, which are so beaut, were narow es cl yes elo they spring. sal flow hes, New shal go get bebad fc fo ‘achat my cosy to condor her when se Busts Ou age and inks “am alone” ‘As I Lay Dying uses not tags but name-captons to identify each speaker: Dart Jewel and Icon up fom tefl fllowing the path in single file. Al thowgh' am ech for ahead of Am, ane watching om he Eeitonhouse ean ste Jeet faed and broken ssw Bet fall Rend stove my own In neither novel do other characters respond directly to the statements ofthe speaker thus we infer that the others have not heard them. So the form cannot be “dramatic monologue” ‘Though Berard seems to be addressing Neville directly, there is nothing in Nevile’s own speech (which occurs no less than four pages and ten speakers ater to sggest an acknowledge ‘ment of what Berna has sid. Indeed, the speech implies that ‘Berard isnot even present “here Berar” sad Neve “He has my nie, We were in the toolshed making bats, and Susan came past the door Nor isthe reader named or addressed in either The Waves of ‘As Tay Dying. In the rare cases that "you" occurs, It serves 35 apostrophe, 2 In Louis speech upon fishing school “Lam most gatefal to you men in Black gowns, and you, ded, for your les or your gardanshp.< : Soliloquies, then, are in fact possible in narrative, providing they are tagged, never free, forte simple eason that they mist be recognized unambiguously as speech, not thought, or as 2 stylized, expressionste form beyond mere thinking or speak- ing. In this sense, As I Lay Dying is more ambiguous than The Wes, since it gives only nammecaptions and does not specy Whether the named character thinks or speaks the words that follow. My own feling is that we are to assume that the words in Faulkner’ novel are nether spoken nor thought but rather DISCOURSE: NONNARKATED STORIES 181 attributed to characters in some extranatualistie way. But the ‘expression is always external, and for that reason belongs here inthe discussion of unmediated speech, Soliloquy is perhaps best used as term to refer to nonnatu- rlistic of “expressinistic” naratives in which the only infor: ‘mational source is that of characters formally presenting, ex: plaining, and commenting upon things, These are formal ‘eclamations— not speech or thought in the ordinary sense but ‘stylized merging of the two. As with dramatic monologue and ialogue, the convention is that they have been “heard” by someone and transformed into a wailen text. Roaraof Thought: Direct Free Sile=Interir Monologue ‘We turn now to characters’ thoughts. The representation of a character's consciousness may also be unmediated (although the very fact that it is revealed implies a shade more mediation {han that in a strict speech record), But “consciousness” as a narrative concept needs cicumapsction and circumscription. Some plan-sense observations might help distinguish cases often confusingly limped together, ‘Without plunging into psychology, one can separate two Kinds of mental acuity: that which entails "verbalization,”" and that which docs not—roughly, the distinction between cog ‘ion and perception. 1am somelimes conscious of saying to my- self 251 passa market the words "I must get milk and bread,” but rarely of saying, a6 I poss a garden, “That rose is ed” oF “Look at that red rose or "The redaess of that rose.” The later fs something “fel” rather than sa Since a cognition is already a verbal constitute, or is easly 2s ons win Sitesi “The Stra Conaicueoss Nowa ‘ng he Raat ef Coons tang” Be Cy iG Stenberg sences tous wae a pyehgel tries cdard ‘ew, but comes tp wae mle tha the Sern th soe pro ‘suse nse Pere the ath tae ae nota ‘sel spel cements acy nave he ante. Ba th fot PrsskesyaelyReweng wit nen dtr fttor danse ato, thesis sme he sind ‘Sty atacand cameras enn on i con wc182 stony ano osscounse reduced to one, its tansference to verbal nareative is simple and ‘immediate. But the communication of perceptions requires & transformation ito language. A visual medium like the cinema ‘an imitate ared rose directly, nonverbally, and noncomsittally, and it can show thet it Is the abject of a character's perception by simple conventions, ike having the characte ook oft screen, and then eating to the rose itself, But the verbal medium nec. essarly presupposes a verbalization of that which is not in scence verbal "Now an important question is whether this verbalization does for docs not necessarily assig the words toa narrator. Can non- ‘verbal sensations be transformed into “unassigned” words? The answer is yes by means of the “interior monologue.” ‘The most obvious and direct means of handling the thoughts of a characteris t0 treat them a9 “unspoken speech,” plc ing them in quotation marks, accompanied by tags like “he thought.” From Pride and Prejudice, "Can this be Mr. Darcy thought she.” This is direct tagged thought: the tense of the report clause is present, not pastas it would bein the ease of Indluec style, a tag is used, and the thought appears in quota- tion marks. To the function of stenographer has been added that of mind:-reader. But no more than that, There is no interpreta- tion, Only the words—the exact words, diction, and syntat, as “opoken’ inthe character's mind—have been taken down. The narrator ise bt more prominent by assuming this funetion, but ‘only abit. We have moved along the spectrum only & notch oF ‘wo. Further, its very easy—and has long been commonplace in ‘Wester fiction—to drop the quotation marks. And more re cently the tag has also been eliminated. The results direct foe thought. This isa form of enactment that in extended form is called “interior monologue.”*" The caiterial features are (O) The character’ sel-reference, if any, is fist person (@) The current discourse-moment is the same as the story- ie Sscirty ee are eerie enc esi de Discounst: NONNARRATED STORIES 169 ‘moment; hence any predicate refers to the current mo ‘ment wil be in the present tense, This snot an “ep pros ent” depicting pastime, but rather «real present refering to contemporary tine of the action. Memories and other ‘references tothe past will ocur inthe simple preterit, not the past perfec @) The language—idiom, diction, word- and syntactic- choice—are identiably those ofthe character, whether oF fot a narrator elsewhere intervenes (@) Allusions to anything in the character's experience are made with no more explanation than would be needed in his own thinking, thats, (6) There is no presumptive audience other than the thinker himself, no deference fo the ignorance or expository needs ofa narrates Conditions (1), @), and (4) are not, of course, unigue to direct fee thought, They apply equally to any form of unmediated speech— dramatic monologue, dialogue, and soliloquy (but not to indirect free thought and speech, Which are narator-medi ated, albeit minimally and sometimes ambiguously so). Its important to note that this characterization of interior monologue inches the enactment of both perceptions and cog: ritions In this respect i difers from previous opinions (ike Lawrence Bowling’), which use the perceptin/cognition ds- tinction to contrast inlerior monologue With "stream of con- For an example of direct free thought, consider this extract from the “Calypso” section of Ulses. We first meet Leopold Bloom in the kitchen (I number the sentences fr the reader's convenience) [a Kidneys were in his mind ashe moved abo the then sly, righting her breskia things on the Bumpy tay. [2] Geld igh and Segment om Soetoro Seal eee eure SL eb en aa oe184 stony avo oiscourse sir were inthe ktchen bu out of doors gente summer moming every a sc mtg See eae nee nee mrspisa sean uA Seis ated tareo ct t Fee aerate co a Sr enero eran ee 13-8 e mt i r Such passages, though often cited as standard examples of Interior monologue are by no means uniformly pare direc eee thought. The first four sentences communicate the staightfor ward report ofan effaced nanator. The character is refered 10 by the third person and his actions and thoughts represented inthe past tense, Actually, the narator’s voice is more audible than in “The Killers." In the third sentence the deletion of “it” hint atthe direct style, but the tense remains preter Tn sentence five, hovever, there is a shift to direct free ‘thought, not because ofthe truncated syntax (the third sentence fs truncated without a shift in tansmissional mode), but rather because what is deleted is clearly a tg like "He thought” and the pronoun “1.” Te deleted predicate, see infer, is the present tense. "He thought, ned to add another sce of bread and butter” (or the lke). Why are we so certain that these are the ‘eact words that passthrough Bloom's mind? (I) Because the words “right” cannot be attabuted to the narrator: in this con- text, the narrator eannot reasonably be imagined to be weighing the “rightness” of anything. Only Bloom can do 30, (2) Because nareators conventionally do not speak in truneated syntax. {@) Because there is no audience: Bloom isnot his own narrate, (@) Because of the semantics: three pls another sce makes four that’s “right” the exact number to sult Moly’s taste. Only ‘Bloom would be interested inthe arithmetic. Sentence six, on the other hand, is indizect free style, since the predicate is “did't” rather than “doesn’t.” Seven is verb- less gain, so we assume direct free thought. Hight and nine resume the narrators voice. "Soon,” in ten, however, ia pres: DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES 185 tent time adverb, and withthe absent predicate, which might be present, brings us back to a quotation of words passing through Bloom's mind: "11 have a} cup af tea soon.” Similarly eleven is short for “That's good.” Sentence twelve, however, slifers in an interesting way- All the direct free thought sen tences so far—five, seven ten, and eleven—have communicated ‘cognitions, The words say what Bloom's mental voice seems ‘unequivocally to say. But “Mouth dry” may simply mean that Bloom's mouth fers dry, in which ease the words, by the stan= dard convention discussed above, translate an unarticulated sensation. Or he may (also) be saying to himself, n responce to the dry sensation, “My mouths dry.” There seems no way of| Knowing whether one or the other, or both, are meant. This neutralization of the distinction between conception and per ‘ception by truncation is very common in interior monologue ‘Sentence thirteen resumes direct narration, and fourteen and filteen, ofcourse, ee dslogue, that is, direct tagged speech, ‘We can see tht it takes relatively ite in the way of direct free thought to suggest the eet of “interior monologue.” And, further, though fragmentary syntax may accompany this style, the only obligatory technique is direct free thought—sell-te. ‘erence by frst person pronoun (if used), the present orientation of verb tenses, and the deletion of quotation marks. What absolutely distinguishes interior monologue from other representations of consciousness i its prohibition of express statements by a narrator that the character i in fact thinking for perceiving. The words purport tobe exactly and only those that passthrough his or her mind, or thelr surrogates, if the thoughts are perceptions “The mixed character ofthe above extract from “Calypso” is no accident. Critics have noted the dificult of unreleved pure Interior monologue, of conveying the outer actions and situation of character if the text totally locked up in his mind. In- ferences can only go so fr. Joyce had good season for switching back and forth between interior monologue and covert nama tion, atleast in the sections devoted to Leopold and Stephen, ‘To show Leopold moving around the city required an objective view. The immersion ina mind ean only be complete whe the186 stoxy AND piscouRse ee pasts sy kan ang emcees ree ont aertiee e Fanta wee at ti ny Bey aaa seme etn tl Hoe estate ls Sa Revi ea ot ca Fear tgs ig eae Se ee ae ty een Oiled gas anc nase se ge abn eo etc meta Scns mentale Terran ena nel Saori ea ya se Greet oan apie a Sn ca oe eries pean matches Stra of Concise Fe Ascaton What ofthe term “stream of consciousness" How shalit be defined? Or to sok a ore uefa question, since we are inter {Sted na deductive pets of the hari How shall we de- ‘Ede whith set of festres to assign to Shall tbe teed She simple synonym for inter monoioge? Or re there sut- Ant diferece to warn» dstntion? My own conluion Sthat one can be wsefly sustained, though on aba igh Giferent rom that propoed by previous scholars ini nina the dence ete he sere ‘was simply etymological. “Ineror (“interna”) monologue” tas the Engluh adaption othe French morabge lena {Coined apparent by Duras pire), wile "ream of conscious mest" wat'a phase fs used in Willam James's Principles of Pehl, ner making its way imo Anglo-American Mterary casers (och oo May Sins intdacon to Dorothy chro’ Pirngg) The terms were fst teat 28 5 nym ond stil sey many) Later, vous distinctions free dawn fa pracice common inthe historia development of Engh). DISCOURSE: NONKARRATED STORIES 187 mn one of the best studies of the subject, Lawrence Bowling argued that “interior monologue” should be limited to coga tions, tothe depiction of thoughts already in verbal form in the ‘character's mind the direct imation of one's silent “speaking” to oneselt. “Pure sensations and images which the mind does not translate into language” he preferred to cal “sense impres- siony” (my "perceptions". His example from Dorothy Richard son's Honeycomb ‘ey bulings rising on ether side, fling away ito the approaching ‘istance—anges sharp agit the sy Sse angles alfings ‘Sganat oer buddinge © hgh souided angles salle umd, wit ‘Sep undesshadaws "crepes fying font balconies ice aed ety Pete er ree Serpe g yal fal st ao ca tia wa pena Sennme e ie renee core icteernslsh atin amen ak ts finan enera ete Oe 6th deatena ere cee Seer eee ioe Sue foeiatnce ue eS Saar inp rermeet soa me See taTinn rcaean Ee dat eee qu cee ee Fee eee ot muna tegatana arora tee een onset sae orcas eave rns opens ated So ea a Sreecipstice cer. een nt fanaa eee canes cee aoa a Soars meena ee oe188 sroxy AND piscouRsé pendent os medion) Veil nanatives however cannot go Eoyond words, so they ae used, but something must be done to uggont tat tey ste not words, th the experiences ome tmunicated have nothing todo with words. What sor of some- Thing What makes Bowing sue thatthe passage fs» ect, qottion of Miran’ sensations and not aratr’s itera Stays For hits he truncated syan-—the "bef ploases, Sparated by thee eit dos,” the use of nouns without Ntrbsifan abject bok moving nd attached to a pail Is Obviouy, however copnitve thinking canbe expressed the same wy. Perhaps Bowling ot claiming that tuncted ‘fan sa shique propery of “sense impressions," ony that {iven such content tan serve to mark the frm aa steam of Ecratouanen ther than internal analysis ‘ut why should we use “tea of consciousness" to acount for "sense impression?” Why is nok “cense impression” elf the adequate ae aterm’? We should preserve Bowing’ Valu- hie dtincsone by reversing ther: let “interior monologue” ie the cs term and two other terms refer tothe two sublsses Conceptual” and “percep” "Conceal interior one Iocan abel the ecard of acta ord psig oh a racers mind, and "percepial interior monalogue,” the ommucaton, by conventional vel transformation, tat of the characters unartclated sense pressions (wihout 8 as ‘ator’ internal sal) sien of conecousest” then is freed to mean something cise, namely the tandem ordering of thoughts and impressions Thu appropiate othe implications of sream” The mind is engaged th that orinay flow of sasodaton, atthe opposite pole om thinking to sme porpone™ 24 Trg yt cnet pod ose hs a he nel endo pata soem ory ang ht re nt 3 Suna ee 1 Spe ena ay ht ous tt erie aks of pacing woul nd sew specs ie sted ye Ser Se ain wit a al yn fom Tee ace yen enacts vy lide er nro ‘ies omen pana sd uo re pa SL ite pe ening rte heap ogy eds ooo ce ‘ted comet wihe speote ‘DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED SrORIES 189 “heaton ofthe nd may ee be ought ob pe it bet iat nd th ald “ced sector) ay ieee om one oe to another by unos sae, ot otherwise aren or ing sls (nde say aed ot ftrocaon') tf the proces of ee saocaton tat eopecaly Shera of suet consousest wing nat bec cn red smo aking in Bt ter Bethe the de poe Senaton of ee soca toaly hing in her eo ok ae, Interior monologue is marked by syns it esribes present tenae verbs and fist person pronoun reference fo the Enking character (rte inphatin ofthese where the syntax i rae fated). Steam of consousnes, a used here, goer beyond sya the constrains the arrangement of semantic elements accomd- ing tothe prinipeof fee association. There sno reason why thetwomtcooccr (hough they ually do). Author readily combine the fre sseitveprncple with the se ofthe epi preter, tgs, and soon. Au Scholes and Kellogg. point ot ream of consciousness can be an ordering principle even in dlalogue. Or contaly sustained interior monologue can Show content development of» highly purpose, tlogeal, “conrlled-ssactve” sr This te, historically that interior monologue and stream of 2H Atm ern Mt oy cae artes tnd en ceria aah eae pee, Sine terre a eae mmr Seeger ei, oe i alkene panos Sees ty ‘Metta Foam Som of Css A Sy Lacy hed los Henican eee Sees eases Sunvemanieee toa cee People cate wage raat SS serra ores Seeders yee cae canes Biions pa aay tein emery eee cee maint thoes190 sroxy AND piscouase consciousness tend to co-cccu in texts. But if we are fo keep ‘our analyses clear and sharp, we must not let them become 80 tentangled that we cannot examine each for itself. Without dis- tinctions and the capact to distinguish, we cannot deal with new configurations, new constellations of features. Robert Humphrey's account ofthe stream of consciousness,” for x= ample, wil ell us nothing about the method of La fuse and ‘many other avant-garde naratives. And, 10 say it once again, the capacity to predict new possibliesis precisely what makes iteray (and aesthetic) theores interesting and viable "Thete has been much discussion offre association but litle ‘practical illustration oft, particulary in comparison with con- trolled association, Perhaps the best way to illustrate free asso- dative passages to contrast them with depictions ofthe mind ‘larly notin that mode. Pride and Prejudice is a ood fk con- Sider the moment just ater Lady Catherine has warned Fliza- beth not to anticipate a proposal from Me. Darcy. Elizabeth mulls over the surprising discussion: The dacmponre of ptt, which thi extraordinary visit thre Eliza. {eth into could not be say overcame; nar oul she for any hous, {iat to thik of less than newman. Lady Cather actly taken the trouble ofthis journey tom Rong, fr purpose of breaking of her supposed engagement wth Me. Darcy. TE ea aoa sche ote st om what he ep fhe agement could orgie, Hizabeth was at oss to imagine SRE Sood that he erg the inte fend of Bingley and er [ng the sinter of Jane, wna enough, ats tne when Un expectation (rove wedding, ade everybody eager fo another to supply the ies. She'd not evel forgaten tee thatthe mariage ef er ster ‘ust bring them more equcny together And her neighbours at {eae nde, therefore, er fhough ter communication wah the Ca lines, the sept she concluded ad reached Lady Cater) had only fet fut doh a smoot corsa sn emmedate Which Se had ook ‘Goward toa poe at ome lature ane (One is immediately struck by the purposiveness implied in this representation of the workings Of Hlzabeth’s thinking. Her mind is entered for only one reason, 10 satisfy the fllowing plot requirement: she must be shown to be agitated, curious, find, in spite of herself, hopeful. She has already rejected DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES 191 Darcy's offer of marriage and has no particular reason to believe that it willbe repeated, Yet she has come to cepret her earlier prejudice against him. Suddenly, Lady Catherine descends lapon her, speaks ofa rumor that the two are engaged, and de mands that Elizabeth promise not to marry him Elizabeth re- fuses to make such a promise, by reflex of pride more than ‘alelation, After Lady Catherine's departure she feels per: plexed, angry, yet strangely hopeful (ina repressed way, as befits her general circumspectnes and sense of decorum —even within the privacy of her own mind). The passage tll us, firstly, that she is discomposed; secondly, that she cannot take her mind off «vst extraordinary not only in its substance but inthe urgency attached to it by Lady Catherine, who clearly feels that Darcy may indeed act thirdly, that she wonders how such a rumor could have begun; fourhly, that the fact that Darcy is Bingley’s fiend and she Jane’s sister must have prompted speculation about her prospects to; and finally that the Lucases have already consummated a match which she has ‘begun to contemplate only in the pavacy of her own mind “The selection tat is made from Elizabeth's consciousness is almost a severely organized as dialectic itself Fist her general- ized and still inarticulate discomposure; then her analysis of why the event is upsetting: then Rer attempt to determine rea- Sons and sources for the rumor; and finally her speculation shout what wil come of al. What could be neater and, above all, more pointed inform? And less ike free association? What is important for our purposes isnot that Elizabeth has a tidy mind (though ofcourse she does), but that the impliod author treats mental depiction, like other narrative actions, as simply “hat happens next” along the plotline. The plot strongly teleological i answers the question “Will Elzabeth and Darcy finally marry?” No digressions from that question are allowed 12 ‘occur: Free association would obviously mar the straightforward ‘dit of this classical narrative syle. Everything in such novels, Including the cogitations of characters, 1s, a8 Mikhall Bakhtin would aay, “plot-pragmatic”"" Psychologically, the style i 28, Bain, Dany Pat, 5.192 stony ano oiscousse neither more nor less “realistic” than later styles. It simply employs a diferent notion of realism, presupposing that the process of mental association is subordinate fo the thoughts themselves, which in tur ae atthe stict service of the pot "Now consider the beginning of "The Lotus-Eates” section of Ulysses LH) BY LORRIES ALONG SiR JOHN ROGERSON'S QUAY M&, BLOOM wad sty pt Winn ne Cr’ he nud ‘rshers, the posal and tCeguaph afice [2] Could have given tht SEures oo) And past th srs home ered fom the ngs oy rhe ln od hs but ow seed gut (6) A salir ge wih soe exe omer Eten ye intel ing bree ke Soop) Te inthe Saker he wont ow: ff Olt hn! Iie such bed f sone] Wating suse pbs fo bing da off Cane he ay pay pd {21 Sick wnt Be any ete 3 ec Tovrcend sch sed the Lonny fac eel (i) Eyes: house of ep, Be {iy And ps Ns th ueraber’s. 1 At eleven tf) Tne ugh 8) Dany Cony Keer bagged tht for Rate {2} Singing wih yes la (20 Con Me ey one in the ak (4) he dar. sn} Pte oat (5) Her ane as tes wh yao rom (8) Sey bogged 2 Bury hin chap nt bayou 28] With my tooraloom, tooraloom tooraloom, feonloce ‘This is the representation of a man thinking, but he is not thinking to any particular purpose, his thoughts are not directed or chained—as are Elizabeth’s—to some inexorable match of events, The events in Ulyses—the funeral, Leopold’ yl with Gertie Macdowel his meeting wth Stephen—do not "go" any- where, inthe traditional sense. No state of asics changes in any important way, as it does in Pride and Prejudice (Elizabeth arts out single and ends up marred), Whatever artistic losses might be incurred by reversing event—say, having Leopold Wisi the telegraph ofice belore the funeral rather than ater — the narative logic would remain pretty much the same. Joyce, Wool, Ingmar Bergman, and other modem artists do not teat plot as an intricate puzzle tobe solved. It is nota change in the State of afais, but simply the state of afairs isl. In this con- DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES 193 txt the rambling stream of conscousness makes its natural home “Yet this passage is not « mere chaos of impressions, Free as- sociation has its own organizational principles, which Freud and others have made clearprinciples of generalization, analysis, exemplifiation, and so on. Along with these eccur "less re- Spectabie” mental phenomena-—puins and other Klang-associa- tons, repressions, condensations Let us look ata few ofthese principles, fr instance that of pysial contiguity in sentence two. Bloom's proximity to the postal telegraph office is communicated direcy by the narrator. ‘Whence we leap to his mental action in intetior monologue — “could have given that address too.” We infer, by the contiguity principle, that the deictic "that refers tothe latest objet named by the narrator. (Only later shall we understand the fall mean=| Ing: the postal telegraph office would be as good as the post fice as secret addres for his surreptitious correspondence ‘with Martha.) Blooms perception ofthe post office isnot regi tered but only implied in the blank space between the twa sen- fences. Physical contigulty operates again in sentences five and seven: Bloom sees a boy smoking a cigarette and is prompted to ofer paternal advice. So neonsdeaton becomes the organiza- tonal principle In eight: Bloom has second thoughts ("O let him). This in tur has been prompted by speculation ("His ie isn such a bed of roses,” nine), including the mental evocation of ascoe in the boy's life ("Waiting outside pubs,” ten, includ ing imagined dialogue ("Come home to ma, da”). The basis of connection with the next sentence ie colenpurallythe boy taking a break from his job prompts the obsorvation "Slack hour" Between the narated thirteenth sentence and the mono= Jogued fourteenth, there is a Klany asscittn—"Bethel. EI", and within the fourteenth the Klang combines with mtorr ""Bethe!—El—Aleph, Beth—" the name of the synogogue fol loved by the irs wo letters ofthe Hebrew alphabet ‘We have already learned in the previous episode ofthe death of Paddy Dignam. The words "At eleven It is” (sixteen) cross Bloom's mind ashe passes Nichols the undertaker’; "t” mast mean Dignam’s funeral. Contguity and memory cooperate, Fur194 stony aso ouscourse ther we guess that “O'Neil (elghteen) i also a funeral parlor, fon the principle of another example of «cas; therefore, "that job” must be Dignam’s funeral, and Corny Kelleher mast be 8 funerabdirector’s agent. Tis isa network of surmise, of course, but later events—the whole ofthe Hades episode—prove it 10 bbe correct. The shymes and nonsense words ike foralom lay (Qwenty-five, twenty-eight) are associated with Comny by mefon- _yny—he isa jokeser and singer of light songs—but they also ental principe of phonetic cbesion or the like ‘The convention of stream of consciousness has it that there is no extemally. motivated organization of the character's thoughts, nor, of course, a narator to make a selection among. them The eft is quit dierent from the constantly purposive account of Bizabeth’s thought. The reader knows that extended passages of her thought will tend to rehearse and comment ‘upon past events, even when shes wondering whatisto come, Her thinking is invetertely goal-oriented, easily reducible to question-and-answer lgi, leading up toa inal answer. All the thinking, lke all the other ation in Pride and Prejudice, follows what Barthes cals the “hermeneutic” set of the traditional nine- teenth-century novel. References are always cleat, and they fol- low each other in neat order. But Bloom's thoughts are con- stantly in medias es. At any instant an unlamietopie can ais, Inmany cases, explicit resolution—the idenifeation of deitic Pronoun, for eample—wil oly come later, sometines much ez, sometimes never, Interior Monologue in the Cinema ‘The cinema uses interior monologue and stream of conscious ness infrequently, and its interesting to consider why. Some theorists suggest the influence of the behaviors! school of modern fetion (for example, Hemingway, in which language Is generally depreciated, in particular the language of thinking. ‘More likely, since films show everything, offscreen voices in general have come to be thought obtrusive and inatistic, and those speeking in truncated syntax and fre-astocatve patterns partculaely so ‘Achieving interior monologue in films i easy enough techn DISCOURSE: NONNARRATED STORIES 195, cally ll that is roquited i that the voice-over be identifiable as the character's, whose lips do not move. But that combination ‘may evoke other meanings as well. Only the context can tell us whether itis indeed his interior monologue, oF a soliloquy, oF feven a retrospective commentary on the action (as a football, player might comment an his performance at @ post-game ‘ovle). Other features may be used to clanfy the situation. A, ‘whispering voiceover may suggest the privacy of interior mon- logue. And of course the text may be fragmented in syntax fand free in psychological associations, as in classic interior ‘monologue passages in verbal narrative. But this seems very rare—T can only remember one or two movies, for instance, Hitchcock's Murder (1980), in which it occurs, Because of the medium’s conventions i is possible 10 be fooled. The first Several Hes that I Saw Jean-Lue Godard’s Une Femme Marie, TTassumed that the voice-over whispering in frely associative faogmented syntax represented the wifes interior monologue. The last time I saw it I changed my mind: it seemed, rather, tan abstracted and disembodied commentary on the action, not ‘he wife's Vokes al, buta set of clichés, a trivial as the artes ‘nthe lady's magazine Ele that she and her maid read, or the chatter about their apartment that passes for conversation when the entertains a visitor The fragmentation in this case docs not Teflect the immediacy and free-flowing character of the thinking process, but the meaningless slerotypes of advertising and heap fiction. Unlike the thoughts of Leopold or Stephen, such Tats of phrascology a we hear from the unseen lis ofthe voice ver What did he mean?” "I wonder if lean,” "I love you" find so on—bear no immediately explicable relation to the heroine's ongoing thinking, They form rather a commentary on the quality of her lif, like the snatches of banal popular song that also accompany her actions. 2, Hitceock erent she to “osm oon” athe han scandent eh "teen vee” ery) to dente {Riscene showing hat he at eer oaon cary bd (ane ‘raat lence New You Ie p53)