19. Commentry 1st Draft

Commentary- ‘Disorientated’ Monologue

I wrote a monologue, including stage directions and realistic speech patterns. Other genre requirements, like anecdotes and personal opinions, ensure that the listener feels like the speaker is speaking spontaneously and with authenticity. My monologue is intended to be spoken in a theatre and is aimed toward older theatre-goers. The purpose is to entertain and inform the audience of the strain and stress experienced by the soldiers in WW1. I want the reader to feel the soldier’s pain, disorientation and desperation and think about the many lives that were taken. I also want them to know that their last thoughts were thoughts of love, not of hate.

I had four main style models for my first draft and added another for my second draft. I used the novel Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo, the script of the movie War Horse directed by Steven Spielberg, the end monologue from the film American Beauty (1999) and the play Journey’s End by R.C. Sheriff. For my second draft, I added a monologue written by Alan Bennett called Her Big Chance.

My mind-map helped me create my first draft; however that draft wasn’t formatted correctly and was written more for theatrical purposes, like the War Horse script. I rewrote my monologue using my new style model as a template and my 2^nd draft was more about the speech than the visuals. After some verbal feedback, I added detail to the section in Pa’s shop, making the characters seem more real and I changed the ending in order to include a reference to disorientation.

I started with an idiom that was frequently used at that time as well as a contraction of the dysphemism ‘toffee nosed’, meaning posh. My lexical choice reflects the period, for example ‘Blighty’, and also the grammar and vocabulary used by each social class. A few words, like ‘dis-disory-tation’ are spelt out phonetically, the way a child would say them and indicating the individual sounds and complicated pronunciation. By using prosodic features, like ‘(sigh)’ and ‘(getting louder)’, I am giving emphasis to certain points. The change in volume shocks the audience and shows them how the soldiers tended to go mad with ‘shell shock’. To highlight this, I have also included cross-cutting between anecdotes to represent the muddled nature of their thoughts and feelings. In the last paragraph, I included direct address that was directed at other characters, but as though they were in the audience. I think that this makes the audience more emotional, like they have a more personal connection with not only the speaker but also those he is speaking to. By talking to his wife about their wedding day, the audience is looking into their intimate memories and can feel the emotion.

My final result was very different to what I had originally planned but I think it was still successful in meeting my aims for the monologue. I managed to stick to my proposal sheet for the majority of my points and I am happy with the finished result.