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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 Civil War.
(b) Columbus's voyage.
(c) The American Revolution.
(d) The Pilgrims' first landing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15. 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) Chiasmus and antithesis.
(c) Antithesis and oxymoron.
(d) Oxymoron and epistrophe.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. Which technique is used in the first line, "The land was ours before we were the land’s"?

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)?

(see the answer keys)

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