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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 people.
(b) The American land.
(c) The history of the United States.
(d) The wars fought to secure land.

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

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

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

5. What technique is used in the line "Such as she was, such as she would become" (line 16)?

(see the answer key)

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