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

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

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

4. What technique is used in the line "Such as she was, such as she would become" (line 16)?
(a) Anadiplosis.
(b) Symbolism.
(c) Anaphora.
(d) Chiasmus.

5. What is the antecedent of "it" in the phrase "it was ourselves" (line 9)?
(a) "What we still were unpossessed by" (line 6).
(b) "What we now no more possessed" (line 7).
(c) "Still colonials" (line 5).
(d) "Something we were withholding" (line 8).

Short Answer Questions

1. Which term most accurately describes the meter of "The Gift Outright"?

2. What is the implied antecedent of "our" and "we" in lines 1 and 2?

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

4. According to the poem's second sentence, how did "we" find "salvation"?

5. Which technique is used in the first line, "The land was ours before we were the land’s"?

(see the answer key)

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