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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. 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) Metonymy.
(c) Alliteration.
(d) Symbolism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

14. 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.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

3. What is alluded to in the phrase "the land vaguely realizing westward" (line 14)?

(see the answer keys)

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