“A quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office or the alarmlock next door at cockshout clattering the brain out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so that I can get up early.” (1922, rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986, p. 642).
James Joyce’s famous novel, Ulysses, is known for its vast use of the stream of consciousness as proposed by William James. When first investigating the assignment I was unclear as to what would remind me of the stream of consciousness. After better understanding the meaning of the phrase, I chose this quote from Ulysses. The narrator appears to be restless in his attempt to find slumber, as his mind is racing from one thought to the next. He begins to ponder the fact that people far away from him in China are waking up from their night of sleep while he still hasn’t found any. He then drifts off into thought regarding priests and their sleep patterns, and then counts to five in his head seeing if he can fall asleep. This pattern of random thought continues on, as his thoughts ramble.
As we stated in class, James infers that the stream of consciousness suggests that a person’s mind is never static, so that our thoughts are continuously running with no lapse in between. The narrator in Ulysses runs from thought to thought never giving a moment to breathe. It’s a perfect example of how a restless person tries to fall asleep at night. You get the feeling of a continuous thought process from this quote due to the fact there are no periods or commas present in the writing. With no grammatical pause in the writing, the narrator’s thoughts seem to form a perfect “stream” of consciousness. This element in Joyce’s writing corresponds accurately to James’ description of the stream of consciousness.