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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

14. 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) Asyndeton and apostrophe.
(d) Antithesis and synecdoche.

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

Short Answer 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)?

2. According to the poem's second sentence, how did "we" find "salvation"?

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

(see the answer keys)

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