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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

13. 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.

14. 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.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is the author of "The Gift Outright"?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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