Essay
Free Indirect Discourse
August, 2016
[Hock G. Tjoa - Many of us in the Writers Workshop have struggled with “point of
view” and voice. I came across this (transcript of a) lecture by Bruce Holsinger of the
University of Virginia on historical fiction (one of those online courses that are free and
so informative). The following has been copied from the transcript of the fourth lecture
in “Week 4” and downloaded on May 3, 2016 from
https://www.coursera.org/learn/historical-fiction/home/week/4. The words are those of
the professor; it is a close analysis of a passage in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.]
The next passage I want to look at is this one. It's a long passage, and if you want to find
it in the novel, it's book two, chapter 22 [from A Tale of Two Cities], and it comes
during a scene that dramatizes a famous episode during The French Revolution. The
hanging of a high level government politician, named Joseph Foulon. Rather than
reading it all aloud at once, I want to break it down for you and talk about how it's
actually working on the level of style.
First, though, I need to introduce a phrase that may be new to many of you, that is free
indirect discourse. Here's a definition, Free Indirect Discourse is a technique of merging
the inner thoughts or words of a fictional character with the voice of a third-person
narrator.
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Another way of thinking about it is to say that in Free Indirect Discourse, the narrator
takes on the inner thoughts or consciousness of the fictional character without setting
them off with quotation marks, introductory phrases, and so on. We tend to notice free
indirect discourse in contrast to straightforward narration; in other words, those moment
when a narrator is simply telling the story in regular past tense. So, let's look at this
passage with that term in mind.
The passage begins in direct narration which I've highlighted here in blue [colored text
not reproduced]. This is simply Dickens' narrator telling us what happened in the past
tense.
The women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their
bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on
the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one
another, and themselves, to madness. With the wildest cries and actions.
Next, we get free <and> [in]direct discourse when the narrator takes on the voice of the
beleaguered women, and I've highlighted this in orange.
Villain Foulon taken my sister. Old Foulon taken my mother. Miscreant Foulon taken
my daughter.
Notice how Dickens doesn't write, and the women cried, villain Foulon taken my sister,
rather he just starts to speak their minds seamlessly. Nor does he set off their speech
with quotation marks, and that's exactly how free indirect discourse works. Next, the
narrator comes back in, giving us a straight account of what happened, and I'm back to
blue for this part.
Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their
hair and screaming.
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Now here in the next section highlighted in red, we get a middle ground between direct
narration and free and direct discourse. Because Dickens introduces this speech with
that phrase, and screaming, which is followed by the screams of the women themselves.
Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass. Foulon who told
my old father that he might eat grass when I had no bread to give him. Foulon who told
my baby it might suck grass when these breasts were dry with want!
But by the time we get to the fourth or fifth sentence, we're back in free indirect
discourse again as the narrator has taken on the voice of the women so thoroughly and
powerfully, that the narrative voice itself is forgotten.
Oh mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and
my withered father. I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon!
Husbands, and brothers, and young men, give us the blood of Foulon. Give us the head
of Foulon. Give us the heart of Foulon. Give us the body and soul of Foulon. Rend
Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him.
And then, at the end of the passage, we're back in straight narration. As the narrator
steps back out of the women's minds and out of free indirect discourse.
With these cries, numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about,
striking and tearing at their own friends until they dropped into a passionate swoon, and
were only saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled under foot.
Now, this is a really extraordinary example of Dickens combining several elements of
narrative style into a single paragraph in just a few sentences. He is using free indirect
discourse to get inside the heads of an entire population of women, and seeing their
oppression from their point of view, even voicing it from their point of view. And it's all
done through the particular choice of literary style.
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Return to the Literary Review Aug 2016
Hock has been active in the Wildwood Writers Workshop since 2014. He h as live d in Lake
Wildwood with his family since 2002, is retired and active among writers and community theater in
the area. Email may be sent to him through [email protected].
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