Author's Point of View at Grade 12
This worksheet helps 12th-grade students analyze and identify the author's point of view in complex texts, focusing on how perspective shapes meaning and interpretation.
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Author's Point of View: Grade 12
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Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Pay close attention to the author's choices in language, detail, and narrative structure to determine their point of view and how it influences the text's meaning.
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 mine to reserve all judgments, a habit that has afforded me many curious natures in the way of intimacies. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and label as abnormal that which is merely unfamiliar. This is a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. Even Jordan Baker, who had grown up in America, was, I surmised, from a rather older, more settled family of Westerners. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world. A man would have to be blind to miss the fairness of a city that was built out of its own dreams. And the city was always the city, and the West was always the West, no matter how much you changed its name. It gave off a sense of something lost, of a time gone by, of a land that was always just beyond reach. And yet, the city held a fascination, a magnetic pull for those who sought to reinvent themselves, to escape the confines of their pasts and embrace the allure of new beginnings."
1. What narrative point of view is primarily used in this passage?
First-person objective
First-person subjective
Third-person omniscient
Third-person limited
2. The narrator’s father’s advice, “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had,” primarily establishes a tone of:
Cynicism
Detachment
Compassion
Indifference
3. The narrator's assertion that "The abnormal mind is quick to detect and label as abnormal that which is merely unfamiliar" reveals a personal philosophy of .
4. The narrator's description of the city as having "its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world" suggests a sense of towards urban life.
5. How does the narrator's status as a 'Westerner' viewing 'Eastern life' contribute to his point of view regarding the city and its inhabitants? Provide specific textual evidence to support your answer.
6. The narrator's statement, "It was a habit of mine to reserve all judgments," indicates that he is a completely unbiased observer of events.
True
False
7. Analyze how the author's narrative choices, including the specific details provided and the language used to describe the characters and setting, shape the reader's understanding of the conflict between the 'West' and the 'East' in the passage. Discuss how the narrator's point of view contributes to the thematic development of the text.