Understanding Character Perspective
A Grade 11 ELA worksheet focusing on analyzing and evaluating character perspective in literary texts.
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Understanding Character Perspective
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Read the following passage carefully. Then, answer the questions that follow, paying close attention to the characters' perspectives and how they influence the narrative.
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 an admonition to reserve all judgments, a habit that has afforded me a good deal of curious speculation. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled 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 unreserved 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 was 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. What is the narrator's initial perspective on judging others, influenced by his father's advice?
He believes in immediate and harsh judgment.
He advocates for reserved judgment and understanding.
He feels all people are inherently decent.
He dismisses his father's advice as irrelevant.
2. How does the narrator's perspective on Gatsby differ from his general reaction to others after returning from the East?
3. The narrator describes Gatsby as having an extraordinary gift for , a romantic readiness such as he has never found in any other person.
4. The narrator's father advised him to reserve all , remembering that not everyone has had the same advantages.
5. The narrator's tolerance for others is boundless and has no limits.
True
False
6. Analyze how the narrator's perspective, as established in this passage, shapes his initial understanding and eventual judgment of Jay Gatsby. Use specific textual evidence to support your analysis.