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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) Surrender and salvation.
(c) Americans themselves.
(d) Freedom from England.

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

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

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

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

6. 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) Symbolism.
(c) Metonymy.
(d) Alliteration.

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

8. 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.

9. 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).

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

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

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

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

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

15. 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 Louisiana Purchase.
(d) The American Civil War.

Short Answer Questions

1. To what event does the phrase "more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" obliquely refer?

2. What is the implied antecedent of "our" and "we" in lines 1 and 2?

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

(see the answer keys)

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