Great Gatsby Writers Statement

The point of view I chose for this text was to write a monologue from the perspective of
Gatsby, reminiscing on how his life led up to where he was standing in the moment. It was
written in first person, partially in present tense and past tense. I started off describing how
he felt in the current moment where I used present tense but then as he started to talk
about flashbacks of his life I switched to past tense. The tone used throughout the text was
aimed to be very conversational as if he was talking to an old friend or himself, telling
stories about his life. As he elaborated on deeper topics such as his time spent with Dan
Cody, I made the tone more serious to show that the story was harder to talk about for him.

My monologue allows Gatsby’s more sensitive side to be discovered and explores the theme
of vulnerability, something that is not highlighted as much in the original text. He shows his
feelings in this monologue in ways that he does not in the text due to his life experiences
being described from his internal point of view, one that is not looked at in the novel due to
the narration by Nick Carraway. An example of this is how he talks about the way Daisy’s
smile makes him feel, “like everything melted away and nothing else in this world mattered,
only that she was looking at me and I was looking at her”. Due to the vulnerability of the
monologue, the chosen target audience would most likely be close friends who he feels
comfortable with, but I can also picture this type of one-sided conversation to be had at one
of the speakeasies of the time, late into the night over a glass of whiskey and spoken with
slurred words.

The pace of the text has room for creativity depending on how the actor chooses to deliver
the monologue, mainly affected by the actors pauses and inflections on words. Otherwise,
the text reads quite slowly, as if Gatsby is choosing his words very cautiously as not to let
anything more than what he intends to slip. I chose this pace to convey to the reader that
he is a particular man who will never say anything he doesn’t wholeheartedly mean. The
speed of the text also aims to provoke a thoughtful response from the audience and
encourage them to listen intently without interruption as they should recognize from the
pace and delivery that Gatsby is talking about a topic that is not common for him to be
opening up about to anyone due to his very secretive and conservative life.

The purpose of this monologue is to explore his emotions more deeply and this is done
using a variety of emotive language to convey his feelings. It uses imagery such as “its never-
ending veridian circle” to establish a clear image in the audience’s head of what he is seeing
in the moment. Strong emotive language is also used as he reflects on his emotions such as
“sickening feeling of twisted guilt and sadness”, the audience can relate to these words, and
it uses emotional memory to evoke a sympathetic reaction as this is hopefully a feeling that
many can relate to. The phrase “old sport” is used throughout the monologue to make clear
that Gatsby is talking to someone that he would consider to be a friend and it is used
particularly in moments when he is defending himself against choices that may have not
been wise, such as when he is explaining his choice to participate in bootlegging. The use of
the phrase “old sport” leads the audience to believe that he has trust in them to understand
why he made the choice and that they should not think badly of him.