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

Multiple Choice 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)?
(a) Personification.
(b) Metonymy.
(c) Symbolism.
(d) Alliteration.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

12. 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.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Which term most accurately describes the meter of "The Gift Outright"?

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

3. What is the antecedent of "it" in the phrase "it was ourselves" (line 9)?

(see the answer keys)

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