Citing Textual Evidence Worksheet
A Grade 10 ELA worksheet focusing on citing textual evidence, including reading comprehension and short answer questions.
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Citing Textual Evidence
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Read the passage below carefully. Then, answer the questions that follow by citing specific textual evidence to support your responses.
Passage from 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. It was a habit of mind then that I learned to cultivate. A sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth. And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an uncritical scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament.”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
1. According to the narrator's father, what should one remember before criticizing others? Provide a direct quote from the text.
2. How does the narrator describe Gatsby's most distinctive quality? Use a specific phrase or sentence from the passage to support your answer.
3. What does the narrator imply about his own tolerance by stating, 'it has a limit'? Explain your answer using evidence from the text.
4. Which of the following best describes the narrator's initial reaction to Gatsby, despite his overall 'uncritical scorn'?
He found him to be a man of great moral character.
He was impressed by Gatsby's 'extraordinary gift for hope'.
He saw Gatsby as a symbol of the riotous excursions he disliked.
He considered Gatsby to be a 'flabby impressionability'.
5. The narrator states that 'a sense of the fundamental is parcelled out unequally at birth.'
6. After returning from the East, the narrator 'felt that I wanted the world to be in and at a sort of moral attention forever.'
7. The narrator's father advised him to always criticize those who are less fortunate.
True
False
8. Analyze how the narrator's father's advice influences his perspective on Gatsby, despite his 'uncritical scorn' for what Gatsby represents. Use at least two pieces of textual evidence to support your analysis.