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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) The land Americans live on.
(b) Americans themselves.
(c) Freedom from England.
(d) Surrender and salvation.

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

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

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

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

6. 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) Chiasmus and antithesis.
(c) Epistrophe and chiasmus.
(d) Oxymoron and epistrophe.

7. 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.

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

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

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

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

13. 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 Civil War.
(c) Columbus's voyage.
(d) The American Revolution.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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