In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Read the full supplied practice passage
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 anyone," 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. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, 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 unaffected 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.
Words to notice in this passage
Find these phrases in the supplied text. What changes if you remove or replace them?
- In my younger and more vulnerable years
- an extraordinary gift for hope
Why read both excerpts?
These are different scenes, not duplicate excerpts. This opening studies a narrator qualifying his judgments; the other passage studies a smile through a sequence of impressions.
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Why This Passage Matters
The narrator begins with advice and spends time qualifying his own judgment before Gatsby enters the account. The opening creates a voice through admissions and contradictions, not just through information about the plot. Notice what the speaker says about himself before accepting his judgments of others.
Writing Techniques to Notice
A remembered instruction:
“my father gave me some advice” frames the opening as an idea the narrator is still considering.Self-qualification:
“after boasting this way of my tolerance” notices a mismatch between the speaker’s claim and his behavior.An exception creates focus:
“Only Gatsby” interrupts the broader judgment of the narrator’s experiences and singles out the subject of the story.
💡 Key Takeaway
A narrator can become interesting by noticing the limits of their own rule.
Try the technique in your own writing
Give a narrator a rule and an exception
Write 70–110 words from a fictional volunteer who believes good plans prevent every problem. Let them describe that rule, admit one limit, and introduce a person who challenges it. Use a concrete event rather than an abstract claim about human nature.
This optional exercise practices a writing choice. Typing speed and accuracy do not grade this original writing.
One possible model and review checks
I used to bring two copies of every timetable to the community fair. If a stall arrived late, I believed, someone had failed to read the plan. Then the rain filled the paper sign-in sheets with blue rivers, and the schedule became something we held over our heads. I still like a numbered list. But I have made an exception for Jo, who arrived without a clipboard and moved three tables under cover before I had found a dry pen.
- The narrator states a rule and admits a concrete limit.
- A specific person becomes the exception.
- The voice uses original details rather than copying Fitzgerald’s phrasing.
Study this technique with more examples · Try a guided original-writing assignment
Similar Passages
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Advice to Writers
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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