Nicki reads

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Viewing guide

Before

In this video, Nicki reads from her graphic novel The Great Gatsby. Before you watch the video, think about what it is like to live in Manhattan, especially the:

busy and crowded streets, cafes and shops
bright city lights
glamourous people, impoverished people
loneliness of the big city.

After

Describe what you understand by the following phrases:

‘throwing mean looks in my direction’
‘I let it blow quietly away’
‘constant flicker of men and women’
‘…restless eye’
‘...before they faded into the warm darkness’.

Nicki Greenberg: So I'm going to read a little bit from my graphic adaptation of 'The Great Gatsby'.

The words all come directly from the original novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and I've interpreted them in pictures. This section shows Nick the narrator, Nick Carraway, talking about his experience of moving to the bustling Manhattan to live and work there and how he feels about it. How he's captivated by the light and the movement and the glamour but he feels just that little bit lonely and a little bit outside of it all.

So this part begins: 'Most of the time I worked I knew the other young bond salesmen by their first names and lunched with them on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee in dark crowded restaurants. I even had a short affair with a girl who worked in the accounting department until her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction and I let it blow quietly away. I began to like New York, the racy adventurous feel to it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up 5th Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, before they faded into warm darkness'.