Thursday, July 8, 2010

Stream of Consciousness

I just came across a term that describes perfectly how the book is composed. Hemingway uses the writing style stream of consciousness for the central character Jake. So far throughout the book, we hear Jake' inner thoughts that portrays to us what kind of a person Jake is. For example, in chapter 5, Jake thinks 'God help you' about Cohn right after he gets mad at Jake for saying go to hell. But then he goes on to say "Forget what I said. I'm sorry." Knowing what Jake is thinking allows us to actually know what he thinks about a person. The dialogue alone would not be able to tell us this. By being able to read most of Jake's thoughts and compare it to his dialogue, we are able to figure out how Jake's mind works and this is a very effective way of analyzing Jake.

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