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

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

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

4. What technique is used in the lines "She was our land more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" (lines 2-3)?
(a) Metonymy.
(b) Personification.
(c) Alliteration.
(d) Symbolism.

5. Which technique is used in the first line, "The land was ours before we were the land’s"?
(a) Allegory.
(b) Anaphora.
(c) Chiasmus.
(d) Euphemism.

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

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

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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