Benchmark #2: Gatsby's Past CER Response

Unit 4 Gatsby’s Past Benchmark

Gatsby’s Past Benchmark Writing

Let’s review a CER response using the quote provided on the previous page.

Imagine this is your prompt for a CER response: Why does Gatsby’s past help him

reinvent himself?

Gatsby’s past helps him reinvent himself because he essentially severs all ties to his past to

create a new person​. ​Nick describes Gatsby’s parents as “shiftless and unsuccessful farm people” (Fitzgerald 98). ​Gatsby is widely successful and in no way shiftless; in fact, Gatsby is a motivated in business and strives to have the best of everything in life. From his house, to his car, to his

clothes, to his parties, Gatsby wants only the most luxurious and opulent. ​Furthermore, Nick claims that Gatsby sees himself as “the son of God...sprang from the Platonic

conception of himself” (Fitzgerald 98)​. ​ Gatsby completely dissociates himself parents and claims God as his father. He cuts ties with everything in his past in order to recreate his future.

Finally, Gatsby invents the ideal person “a seventeen-year-old boy would want to be” (Fitzgerald

98).​ ​Interestingly, Gatsby’s reinvention is based on a teenage boy’s ideas of the ideal person. His bleak childhood prompts him to create a new and much improved version of himself.​ Clearly, Gatsby's past propels him to create a new version of himself.

Directions:​ Create a CER response paragraph following the model above. Highlight the ​C blue,​ ​E green, ​ and ​R pink.​ Use one ellipsis in your quote. ​Bold ​this sentence. Include a conclusion sentence restating the main idea of the paragraph. Be sure to use at

least one complex sentence and ​underline​ it.

Prompt: How does Gatsby feel about the past? Use the quote below to

support your answer.

“‘Can’t repeat the past?’” he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!”

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his

house, just out of reach of his hand.

‘I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,’ he said, nodding

determinedly. ‘She’ll see.’

He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover

something, some idea, of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had

been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain

starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out that thing was…” (Fitzgerald

110).

Unit 4 Gatsby’s Past Benchmark

Requirements

Claim-

Evidence-

Reason-

Evidence-

Reason-

Conclusion-

Use an ellipses

Use a complex sentence

Type your response below (don’t forget to highlight, underline, and bold all

the pieces)