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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) Free verse.
(b) Ballad meter.
(c) Heroic verse.
(d) Blank verse.

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

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

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

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

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

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 American Revolution.
(c) The Pilgrims' first landing.
(d) The American Civil War.

8. 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) Synecdoche and asyndeton.
(d) Asyndeton and apostrophe.

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

10. 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.

11. 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 now no more possessed" (line 7).
(d) "What we still were unpossessed by" (line 6).

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

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

3. What does line 12 make clear is the "Gift" in the title "The Gift Outright"?

(see the answer keys)

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