View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 1: "The Gift Outright," Lines 1-16.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which term most accurately describes the meter of "The Gift Outright"?
(a) Ballad meter.
(b) Blank verse.
(c) Heroic verse.
(d) Free verse.

2. In line 15, what is the speaker calling "unstoried, artless, unenhanced"?
(a) The American land.
(b) The American people.
(c) The wars fought to secure land.
(d) The history of the United States.

3. The repetition of the word "deed" in line 13 is an example of which technique?
(a) Epistrophe.
(b) Anadiplosis.
(c) Epizeuxis.
(d) Antanaclasis.

4. What is the implied antecedent of "our" and "we" in lines 1 and 2?
(a) Farmers.
(b) Americans.
(c) Revolutionaries.
(d) Colonists.

5. To what event does the phrase "more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" obliquely refer?
(a) Columbus's voyage.
(b) The American Civil War.
(c) The American Revolution.
(d) The Pilgrims' first landing.

Short Answer Questions

1. What technique is used in the lines "She was our land more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" (lines 2-3)?

2. What is the antecedent of "it" in the phrase "it was ourselves" (line 9)?

3. What is alluded to in the phrase "the land vaguely realizing westward" (line 14)?

4. What techniques are used in the lines "Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,/ Possessed by what we now no more possessed" (lines 6-7)?

5. What techniques are used in the lines "She was ours/ In Massachusetts, in Virginia" (lines 3-4)?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 271 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample