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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

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

5. 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.

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

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

8. 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.

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

10. 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.

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

12. 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) Antithesis and oxymoron.
(c) Epistrophe and chiasmus.
(d) Chiasmus and antithesis.

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. In line 15, what is the speaker calling "unstoried, artless, unenhanced"?

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

(see the answer keys)

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