Modernism and Stream of Consciousness

Recognize modernist experiments with fragmented form and the flow of a character's thoughts.

Modernism, centered roughly in the early twentieth century, responded to rapid technological change, world war, and growing doubts about traditional certainties. Modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce experimented with form: fragmented structures, shifting perspectives, ambiguous endings, and stream of consciousness, a technique that imitates the unedited flow of a character's thoughts, sensations, and memories.

Consider an original passage: 'The bus was late again, the third time, and the sky the color of old tin, like the roof of the house on Merrow Lane, where she had been happy, or thought she had, before the letters. ' The sentence drifts from present irritation to color to memory to a hint of loss, following association rather than logic. Readers of modernist fiction must tolerate uncertainty and track patterns of association. Ask what keeps returning to the character's mind; the drifting surface often circles one buried concern, such as 'the letters' here.

• 1Modernism: early twentieth century, formal experiment.
• 2Stream of consciousness follows thought by association.
• 3Track what the mind keeps returning to.