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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 3 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to the poem's second sentence, how did "we" find "salvation"?
(a) By realizing our own weakness.
(b) By fully surrendering ourselves to the land.
(c) By dedicating ourselves to the Christian God.
(d) By finding the courage to fight England.

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

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

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

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

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

7. 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) Personification.
(b) Alliteration.
(c) Symbolism.
(d) Metonymy.

8. Which is the primary definition of "still" being used in the expression "still colonials" in line 5?
(a) Quiet.
(b) Nevertheless.
(c) Continuing to be.
(d) Unmoving.

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

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

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

12. What techniques are used in the lines "She was ours/ In Massachusetts, in Virginia" (lines 3-4)?
(a) Apostrophe and antithesis.
(b) Synecdoche and asyndeton.
(c) Antithesis and synecdoche.
(d) Asyndeton and apostrophe.

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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