Definition and Examples of Interior Monologues

In both fiction and nonfiction, an interior monologue is the expression of a characters thoughts, feelings, and impressions in a narrative. An interior monologue may be either direct or indirect: direct, in which the author seems not to exist and the interior self of the character is given directly, as though the reader were overhearing an articulation of the stream of thought and feeling flowing through the characters mind;indirect, in which the author serves as selector, presenter, guide, and commentator. (W. Harmon and H. Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 2006) Interior Monologues in Fiction   I looked into the reception room. It was empty of everything but the smell of dust. I threw up another window, unlocked the communicating door and went into the room beyond. Three hard chairs and a swivel chair, flat desk with a glass top, five green filing cases, three of them full of nothing, a calendar and a framed license bond on the wall, a phone, a washbowl in a stained wood cupboard, a hatrack, a carpet that was just something on the floor, and two open windows with net curtains that puckered in and out like the lips of a toothless old man sleeping.The same stuff I had had last year, and the year before that. Not beautiful, not gay, but better than a tent on the beach.(Raymond Chandler, The High Window, 1942)How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being m yself. Do not come and worry me with your hints that it is time to shut the shop and be gone. I would willingly give all my money that you should not disturb me but let me sit on and on, silent, alone. (Virginia Woolf, The Waves, 1931) Interior Monologue in Tom Wolfe's Nonfiction [I]nterior monologue is appropriate with nonfiction, provided theres fact to back it up. We cant get into a characters head because we suppose, or imagine, or deduce thats what he or she would be thinking. We have to know!See how Tom Wolfe does it in his book about the space program, The Right Stuff. At the outset he explained that his style was developed to grab the readers attention, to absorb them. . . . He wanted to get into the heads of his characters, even if this was nonfiction. And so, at an astronauts press conference, he quotes a reporters question on who was confident about coming back from space. He describe the astronauts looking at one another and hoisting their hands in the air. Then, hes into their heads: It really made you feel like an idiot, raising your hand this way. If you didnt think you were coming back, then you would really have to be a fool or a nut to have volunteered at all. . . . He goes on for a full page, and in writing this way Wolfe has transcended usual nonfiction style; hes offered characterization and motivation, two fiction writing techniques that can bring the reader in lockstep with the writer. Interior monologue provides a chance to see inside the heads of characters, and we know that the more familiar a reader is with a character, the more the reader embraces that character. (William Noble, Writing Nonfiction—Using Fiction. The Portable Writers Conference, 2nd ed., ed. by Stephen Blake Mettee. Quill Driver, 2007) Stylistic Characteristics of Interior Monologue Sentence fragments may be treated as interior monologue (direct speech) or regarded as part of an adjoining stretch of free  indirect speech.Interior monologue may also contain traces of non-verbal thought. While more formal interior monologue uses the first-person pronoun and finite verbs in the present tense, He [Stephen] lifted his feet up from the suck [of the sand] and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take all, keep all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. [. . .] The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. (Ulysses iii; Joyce 1993: 37; my emphasis) In Ulysses James Joyce conducts more radical experiments with the form of the interior monologue, especially in his representation of the thoughts of Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly. He eschews full sentences with finite verbs in favour of incomplete, often verbless syntagms which simulate Blooms mental leaps as he associates ideas: Hymes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he knows them all. No: coming to me. —I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your christian name? Im not sure. In this example, Blooms impressions and speculations are confirmed by Hynes remarks. (Monika Fludernik, An Introduction to Narratology. Routledge, 2009) Stream of Consciousness and Interior Monologue Although stream of consciousness and interior monologue are often used interchangeably, the former is the more general term. Interior monologue, strictly defined, is a type of stream of consciousness. As such, it presents a characters thoughts, emotions, and fleeting sensations to the reader. Unlike stream of consciousness more generally, however, the ebb and flow of the psyche revealed by interior monologue typically exists at a pre- or sublinguistic level, where images and the connotations they evoke supplant the literal denotative meanings of words. (Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray, The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, 2nd ed. Bedford/St. Martins, 2003)