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

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

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

4. What is alluded to in the phrase "the land vaguely realizing westward" (line 14)?
(a) The forced resettlement of Native peoples.
(b) The Westward expansion of the United States.
(c) The American Civil War.
(d) The Louisiana Purchase.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

4. Which is the primary definition of "still" being used in the expression "still colonials" in line 5?

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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