‘He went out of the room calling ‘Ewing’ To ‘Leaving them there together’ Recast the
meeting between Gatsby and Daisy from Klipspringer’s perspective.
Include:
His thoughts on the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby
His feelings and thoughts towards Gatsby
Transformative:
I stopped by the popular Jazz Bar in town ‘The Village Vanguard’ the following evening after Daisy
and Gatsby’s rendezvous at Gatsby’s place. The Bar was underground in the cellar, the small
windows that lined the top of the cellar let in little light creating a dimly lit and musky atmosphere. I
spotted Joe on the left of the raised stage, his double bass stood next to him, newly polished and
waiting to be played.
“Hey Joe!” I called out as I walked up onto the stage next to him. He looked up from his sheet music
and offered me his hand in greeting. “Hiya Klip, I thought you’d be playing, we missed ya’ last night.”
Joe stated his friendly, joyful persona as present as ever.
“Yeah, I took the night off, wasn’t feeling so great. Not that it mattered much anyways I didn’t get to
rest much.” I replied, which caused Joe to raise an eyebrow.
“Oh, how comes? Something happened?” He asked, concern and confusion taking hold of his
expression.
“Well, Gatsby, my employer, had a surprise visit from a female friend who he seemed pretty fond of.
Well, it looked that way anyways since he made a big deal of waking me up to play for the two of
them. Wasn’t exactly pleased you know; I was tired and with it being my night off and all that.” I
explained in an irritated tone.
“Oh, that’s pretty annoying huh. You have any idea who she was?” Joe questioned once again.
“I’m not sure to be honest but I think I overheard him calling her Daisy. Doesn’t mean much to me
anyhow, whoever she was, he seemed intensely fond of her. Enough to wake me up and have me
play.” I complained again with a huff.
“Hm well I gotta say that’s the first time I’ve heard Gatsby being that interested in anyone.” Joe
stated with a chuckle. “Whoever she is, she clearly means quite a bunch to the guy.”
I huffed, “I’ll say. I hope she doesn’t come round too often though, losing sleep over this was
annoying enough.”
Commentary:
Within my transformation, I chose to use the first person to portray Klipspringer’s reflective,
insecure, and self-centred personality through a first-person account of the events at Gatsby’s
house. This is shown through Klipspringer’s use of modality and mental verbs such as ‘I hope’ and ‘I
think’ as they portray a personal focus and his insecure self-centred view of himself. This same self-
centred but insecure view can be seen in the base text where Klipspringer says ‘I don’t play well. I
don’t – I hardly play at all, I’m all out of prac-’ and ‘I’m all out of practice you see. I told you I couldn’t
play.’ The use of repetition of personal pronouns such as ‘I’, ‘I’m’, ‘my’, ‘me’ in both the base text
and my transformation such as ‘Doesn’t mean much to me’ and ‘my night off’ displays a self-centred
personality as he only focuses on himself.
Similarly, to the base text I presented my transformation as a conversation. By doing this I was able
to portray Klipspringer’s arrogant and selfish personality as he dismisses other topics of conversation
and only focuses on his experiences. For example, the dismissive quantifying statements ‘Doesn’t
mean much to me’ and ‘loosing sleep over this was annoying enough’ portrays him as being self-
absorbed and shows that he views others as having less importance than himself. A similar situation
can be seen in Chapter 9 where Klipspringer says, ‘What I called up about was a pair of shoes I left