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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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) Symbolism.
(d) Alliteration.

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

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

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

5. What is the implied antecedent of "our" and "we" in lines 1 and 2?
(a) Colonists.
(b) Americans.
(c) Revolutionaries.
(d) Farmers.

6. 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.

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

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

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

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

11. 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) Oxymoron and epistrophe.
(c) Chiasmus and antithesis.
(d) Antithesis and oxymoron.

12. 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 finding the courage to fight England.
(d) By dedicating ourselves to the Christian God.

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What technique is used in line 10, "We were withholding from our land of living"?

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

(see the answer keys)

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