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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

4. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

11. 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.

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

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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