Elements of Modernism

Modernist literature employed a number of different experimental writing elements that broke the conventional rules of storytelling. Some of those elements include blended imagery and themes, absurdism, nonlinear narratives, and stream of consciousness — which is a free-flowing inner monologue.

How does having events played chronologically out of order affect the narrative of a story in film and television?

“A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order.” – Jean-Luc Godard.

The nonlinear narrative is a technique that can be used in literature, films, shows, video games, and other narratives. It is where events are played chronologically out of order or in other ways where the narrative doesn’t follow the direct and linear story pattern of the events being played. This technique is often used by directors and screenwriters to produce a different tone for their narrative and they want to portray multiple stories that would eventually line up together or have the audience piece the story themselves during said movie or show, sometimes not even linking the story completely and leaving it to the audience's imagination and interpretation. The technique can also be interpreted in different ways depending on the writer’s creativity and how complex they want the story, as well as, how much they want the audience to piece together the puzzle of said story and interact.

A famous rendition of nonlinear storytelling would be the movie Interstellar (2014) directed by Christopher Nolan. The movie is about a team of explorers who travel through a wormhole in space to find a new habitable planet in a different galaxy in an attempt to ensure humanity's survival as the earth is slowly dying. Nolan portrayed a nonlinear story by telling the story of the main character, Cooper, and his daughter, Murphy, parallel to each other but because Cooper would be on different planets, the sense of time and time itself would be different for him compared to Murphy back on earth. The movie would have the storyline of Cooper going to different planets to examine its habitability as fast as possible so that he can still return to his daughter without too much time passing, and the other storyline is of an older Murphy who is trying to look for a way to assist her dad in any way to get home which resulted in both storylines to line up near the end of the movie as the father/daughter duo managed to interact with each other through space and time. The nonlinear narrative started becoming more prominent during the climax of the movie as it jumps back and forth from different times experienced by different people. By doing this, Nolan made the audience more invested in the characters by having the story split and focus on them both over the last half of the movie.

Japanese anime also sometimes presents its story in a nonlinear order. One example would be Durarara!! (2010-2016) Series which is an adaptation of a light novel series of the same name by Ryohgo Narita (novels, 2004-2014). The anime is set in the downtown district of Ikebukuro in Tokyo, infamous for the rumors and warnings of anonymous gangs and dangerous occupants. Amidst the rumors an urban legend of the existence of a headless “Black Rider” who is said to be seen riding a jet-black motorcycle through the city. Eventually, as more supernatural events began to occur, ordinary citizens, along with Ikebukuro's most colorful inhabitants, would start to get mixed up in the commotion breaking out throughout the city, both the normal and the supernatural. The anime uses nonlinear narrative on quite a large scale, in that the story is told from the perspective of about eleven of the main characters that change every episode, sometimes even changing in the episode. By the end of the season, the audience starts to notice the storylines start to merge together and the characters start to meet each other if they haven’t met each other yet in the season. The series followed this structure for its four seasons eventually leading all the clues and completing the puzzle to its climax and series finale. In Durarara!!’s case of using nonlinear storytelling, it gives each character more character development, getting the audience to be more acquainted with each individual main character and know more about them, from their past to what has them involved in the story's current dilemma. In addition, because each episode provides a new puzzle to the story, it adds suspense the more episodes the viewer is as they are almost able to see what each storyline from each character would result in for the climax.

Depending on how the story is written, using a nonlinear narrative format can give a show its genre. In this case, it would be mystery and psychological, with the animated show following the general name of the Monogatari series (2009-2019) and is based on a light novel series by Nisio Isin (novels, 2005-present). The series revolves around Koyomi Araragi, a third-year high school student who is human but now possesses vampire traits due to a past conflict. Araragi would find himself involved with girls each affiliated with different “oddities” to them and he would have to help them deal with/sort out those “oddities” as it is affecting their lives one way or another. This series uses nonlinear narratives released each season in a non-chronological order. By doing this it gives the story its mystery genre as something might have happened in one season but you won’t know what else or what caused it to happen that won’t be explained until a possible two seasons later.

Every season, every arc comes with a bunch of pieces. The majority of them create the local, contained arc story which is usually finished in itself. But there are also a bunch of other pieces that belong to other puzzles. The arcs of the Monogatari series are interconnected in a rare way because that interconnection isn't complimenting the main story, but a lot of smaller stories.

This goes so far that the Monogatari Series actually outright 'spoils' evens of later arcs. Every time I went back from a new season, I found new pieces of information that were always there, even said outright by characters, but only give a picture once connected to the puzzle pieces acquired later. Most series have side stories, but connect them to the main thread, rarely to each other.

Furthermore, this also makes it so that each season is considered a character arc resulting in character development as well as plot development for this season and possibly later seasons.

Overall, presenting a story that isn’t in chronological order has its unique benefits in that has the audience putting the puzzle to a story’s narrative together throughout the series, season, or movie until the end finale for that satisfying moment where everything lines up and the narrative comes together leaving them with a satisfying and happy conclusion.

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Stream of consciousness is another element. It is a narrative technique that was coined by Alexander Bain in 1855 in the first edition of The Senses and the Intellect and later applied by the very well-known psychologist, idealist, and philosopher William James in his book Principles of Psychology (1890). According to him, “it is nothing jointed; it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life.” This term was first employed by the novelist May Sinclair in the literary context while discussing Dorothy Richardson’s novel in the year 1918.

Stream of consciousness is a narrative device that captures the flow of thoughts, emotions, and inner feelings of the character in a realistic way. Its narration includes a lot of free association, repetition, and sensory observation and lacks the appropriate use of linguistic punctuation and syntax. It is different from the interior monologue, and soliloquy, as they are deployed when the speaker is addressing an audience or a third person in a more organized pattern after the mind, has organized the sensations, chiefly used in poetry or drama. Unlike these devices, the thought process in the stream of consciousness is more fluid and stream which is often depicted as overheard in the mind or addressed to oneself, primarily used in fictional writing. It exists in a preconscious raw unfiltered state of mind which lacks logical sequence, unity, and cohesion of thoughts.

Characteristics of Stream of Consciousness

1. Majorly emerged in the early twentieth-century modernist movement.
2. It characterizes myriad thoughts and images lacking in structured syntax, punctuation, and lexical transitions.
3. The thoughts remain in the mind of the characters whereas interior monologue and soliloquy address one's thoughts to another person or a crowd. This sets the stream of consciousness apart from these literary devices.
4. Dramatic Monologue and Soliloquy are associated with poetry whereas Stream of Consciousness is associated with the novel.
5. Today it has also been used in drama and movies.

Literary Exponents of modern twentieth-century authors including Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway, James Joyce in Ulysses, M. Proust, William Faulkner, and the likes have dexterously used stream of consciousness in their works, particularly in the 1920s and 30s but its usage extends and even goes back to the period of Ken Kesey, Sylvia Plath, Irvine Welsh, George Saunders, and Jonathan Safran Foer. The scope of this device is not limited to any literary period or any movement.

“For having lived in Westminster—how many years now? Over twenty,--one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.”

This passage is about Clarissa Dalloway’s connection to the city, linking her own heartbeat to the clock’s chimes. But it’s also a good example of a stream of consciousness: it has associative thoughts (moving from the clock chimes to her influenza), unusual syntax (all those semi-colons!), and sensory details (like sound, music, and the feeling of a heartbeat).

Here’s one more example, this one from Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved: “the air is heavy / I am not dead / I am not / there is a house / there is what she whispered to me / I am where she told me / I am not dead / I sit / the sun closes my eyes / when I open them I see the face I lost / Sethe’s is the face that left me / Sethe sees me see her and I see the smile / her smiling face is the place for me / it is the face I lost / she is my face smiling at me”

This example is even more disjointed than the first, and that’s a key element of understanding this particular character. The speaker (Beloved) is childlike, ghostly, scared, and confused. Her agitated repetition of “I am not dead” makes it feel like she’s desperately holding onto life, and the many echoes of Sethe’s smiling face show the emotional resonance and importance that image carries for Beloved.

Association is also prominent in this example, moving from the house to the sun to the eyes to Sethe’s face. This particular character’s thoughts are so fluid and stream-like that there is no punctuation at all. This adds to the urgency of the passage, the fear, and, finally, the hope.

In Ulysses, the individual characters' borders are intertwined with the man’s inner life. He even focuses on the happenings of each day and relates them to one another systematically based on Greek Mythology and this psychoanalysis forms a predominant part of his novel which had a heavy influence on American and European Literary writers such as Earnest Hemingway, G. Greene, M. Duras, etc., especially in their early works. Stream of consciousness is a good technique that encapsulates the realistic, mental state, thoughts, and feelings of the characters wherein the inferences can jump from one observation, and reflection to the next seamlessly in and out in time with no particular timeline (non-linear).

Conclusion

Stream of consciousness originally a profound psychological term, left a deep imprint and impact on the modernist movement. It provides a deeply psychological perspective into the character's psyche which sheds light on the innermost thoughts and sensations. It propels us to turn the torchlight inwards and sets the contemplative tone of the novel. It exhibits inner conflict, self-analysis, and imagined dialogue devoid of author's deliberate and intentional control over the narrative. It commonly uses narrative techniques of interior monologue. In short, the Stream of consciousness is an important device of modernist fiction. This term has become common in literary criticism. However, there is no agreed precise definition of the term and no consensus. This has caused much muddling and confusion in discussions of modernist techniques.