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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) Personification.
(b) Alliteration.
(c) Metonymy.
(d) Paradox.

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

3. What does line 12 make clear is the "Gift" in the title "The Gift Outright"?
(a) Surrender and salvation.
(b) Americans themselves.
(c) Freedom from England.
(d) The land Americans live on.

4. What technique is used in the phrase "unstoried, artless, unenhanced" (line 15)?
(a) Asyndeton.
(b) Euphemism.
(c) Assonance.
(d) Apostrophe.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. 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)?

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

3. The repetition of the word "deed" in line 13 is an example of which technique?

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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