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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. What technique is used in line 10, "We were withholding from our land of living"?
(a) Paradox.
(b) Metonymy.
(c) Personification.
(d) Alliteration.

2. 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)?
(a) Chiasmus and antithesis.
(b) Oxymoron and epistrophe.
(c) Epistrophe and chiasmus.
(d) Antithesis and oxymoron.

3. What techniques are used in the lines "She was ours/ In Massachusetts, in Virginia" (lines 3-4)?
(a) Antithesis and synecdoche.
(b) Asyndeton and apostrophe.
(c) Synecdoche and asyndeton.
(d) Apostrophe and antithesis.

4. According to the poem's second sentence, how did "we" find "salvation"?
(a) By finding the courage to fight England.
(b) By fully surrendering ourselves to the land.
(c) By dedicating ourselves to the Christian God.
(d) By realizing our own weakness.

5. Who is the author of "The Gift Outright"?
(a) Donald Hall.
(b) Galway Kinnell.
(c) Robert Frost.
(d) Robert Lowell.

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 does line 12 make clear is the "Gift" in the title "The Gift Outright"?

3. What technique is used in the phrase "unstoried, artless, unenhanced" (line 15)?

4. To what event does the phrase "more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" obliquely refer?

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

(see the answer key)

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