While questions of a more global interruption are addressed in divergence, there is a more literal trope of interruption which pervades the narrative structure of The Italian. Schedoni is, unsurprisingly, the predominant perpetrator of unconventional sequences in which he literally does not allow a lesser character to recount a story which, should it be told, would provide the monk with important knowledge.

The best example occurs after Schedoni, Ellena and their guide explore the ruins of the castle of the Barone di Cambrusca. Schedoni asks the guide, "Do you know anything of the history of this place, friend?" "Yes, Signor" replies the guide and, after beign prompted by Schedoni to relate what he knows, he is soon interrupted:

'I had been out all day, cuting wood in the forest with my father, and tired enough we were, when--'
'This is the history of yourself,' said Schedoni, interrupting him, 'Who did this place belong to?'
...
'He was a Signor little loved in the country,' continued the guide, 'and some people said it was a judgment upon him for-'
'Was it not rather a judgment upon the country,' interrupted the Confessor
...
'Did any other person suffer?' repeated Ellena.
'You shall hear, Signora,' replied the peasant, 'I happen to know something about the matter...' (304)

Here, seemingly as a function of the peasant's lower rank, Schedoni does not allow the peasant to get into his story and does not pay any attention when the story is being told: "'I will finish the meal and the story together, Signor, with your leave,' replied the guide. Schedoni did not notice what he said, and, as the man was not forbidden, he proceeded with his relation" (305).

Schedoni's strange lack of interest in a story whose full disclosure would only be beneficial to his negotiation of a tricky situation seems to mirror the traditional Gothic convention of the unspeakable. In her book The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explains the trope:

At its simplest the unspeakable appears on almost every page: "ununtterable horror": "unspeakable" or "unutterable" are the intensifying adjectives of choice in these novels. At a broader level, the novels deal with things that are naturalistically difficult to talk about, like guilt; but they describe the difficulty, not in terms of resistances that may or may not be overcome, but in terms of an absolute, often institutional prohibition or imperative. (14)

Schedoni's prohibition of speech implies a conscious desire to avoid truth, a clear flaw under the confines of the Gothic system. Recalling that The Italian was an overt response to Matthew G. Lewis' The Monk and that Schedoni is described by Vivaldi as "the monk himself!" (26), Radcliffe uses Schedoni to condemn a work that she felt turned a deaf ear to the truth, both objective truth and, later in The Italian, his own truths.