The Best Literary Monologues to Improve Your Writing
This is the sixth in Authentalk’s series about how to write subject matter-specific speeches. Call it “Librariain.”
I have never been a great writer. Great writers make you put down the book, take a deep breath, and go “wow!” You’re still thinking about their words years or decades later. I can’t remember my phrasing from what I submitted in my MBA final last year.
I fear that an explosion of AI-generated content is only making it harder for me to encounter and learn from great writing in the wild. A March 2026 USC study indicated that AI chatbots are homogenizing how we write. While it’s nice to be able to process the way more people communicate (better to be clear than confused), I’m concerned that a lack of stylistic diversity leads to a dearth of cognitive diversity. As the report says, we become less creative when we write less uniquely.
To remind myself to diversify my writing influences and inspire other writing hobbyists, I’ve collected some great literary monologues (nothing from Shakespeare; this isn’t the Shakespeariain post).
Moby-Dick
Chapter 37 of Moby-Dick, “Sunset,” is the seminal monologue about madness. You can read it here: Moby-Dick, Chapter 37.
By modern standards, it feels clunky for a mad, obsessed character to say “I am madness maddened!” But Melville earns it. We have paragraphs of Captain Ahab suffocating in a pit of churning obsession before his declaration.
Jane Eyre
You can find it in Chapter XXIII here: Jane Eyre, Chapter XXIII. It starts with “I tell you I must go!”
I love how Bronte doesn’t say that Jane is roused to ‘passion,’ but rather ‘something like passion.’ I adore the phrasing ‘It is my spirit that addresses your spirit.’ Both of these intentionally ambiguous phrases invite the reader to fill in the blanks. There is an abiding confidence and trust that the strength of the emotion will resonate with audiences across the years.
Blood Meridian
The “war is god” passage is here: Judge Holden on War.
McCarthy ignores conventional rules of grammar, inverting clauses and using sentence fragments. There is a dizzying stream of consciousness; the narrator is caught up in the tumult of war and does not logically flow from one sentence to the next. Judge Holden, as he extols the ‘game’ of war, speaks with contrastingly chilling conciseness as he explains his internal logic.
Murder on the Orient Express
Detective Hercule Poirot wrapping up the case in Murder on the Orient Express is a masterclass in layered revelation.
Spoiler alert for one of the most well-known mysteries of all time, but the twist is that they’re ALL guilty. Every suspect (all 12) stabbed the victim in an act of vigilante justice.
Poirot first gives an ‘official’ explanation for the death that exculpates the murderers.
When they reject it as implausible, he reveals how he knows how they all did it.
They then accept his first theory to avoid being punished for a crime the reader is meant to accept as justified. Agatha Christie helps us feel that an Ides of March-esque stabbing was deserved in less than 5 pages.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is built around interior fragmentation. You can read it here.
Prufrock’s mind wanders, interrupts itself, retreats, and overthinks. The character is insecure, but the writer is secure in expressing that insecurity.
I’m in my mid-30s. I feel more comfortable in more situations than ever before. But I haven’t hit middle age. I can recognize an impending fear of aging and losing your place in the world that T.S. Eliot captures.
“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool.”
I am still ambitious—for now. I wonder when I’ll feel as the narrator does, resigned to play a supporting role in his own life.
Wuthering Heights
You can read the passage here: Wuthering Heights, Chapter IX.
Catherine says Heathcliff is part of what she is - “I am Heathcliff!”. I love the comparison between her relationships: “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.”
While I wasn’t a fan of the 2026 adaptation (I like this Reddit description: “an erotic movie without sex, a romance without love, a drama without stakes, and a tragedy without emotions”), there’s a reason that so many modern young adult love triangles (Hunger Games? Twilight?) borrow from this exact dynamic. This is a timeless expression of youthful passion.
The Brothers Karamazov
You can read it here: The Grand Inquisitor.
Ivan uses a parable, a story within a story, to tell his brother Alyosha what he thinks about freedom, faith, and human weakness. In the parable, The Grand Inquisitor arrests and interrogates Christ, arguing that Christ misunderstood human nature.
Alyosha is the reader, throwing out theories of why the characters in the parable behave as they do. Dostoevsky uses Ivan as his mouthpiece to dismiss these easy, overly simple answers.
He dances on the line of sacrilegiousness before allowing Alyosha to point out the subtext (by speaking of Christ’s lamblike ideals and portraying the church’s deviation as wicked and selfish, Christ is elevated).
The last line is as fulfilling as ambiguity can be. It’s a Rorschach test in writing. Do you believe mankind can be redeemed? If so, is true redemption desirable?
I try to read one chapter of a new book every day. Sometimes, it’s the equivalent of cotton candy (silly manga), but I need to remind myself to balance out my diet with nutritionally dense literature if I’m going to produce content that won’t be mashed into the homogeneous mush of ChatGPT.
Here’s my Goodreads list if you want to share books (login required)!
What are your favorite literary monologues?
