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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

13. 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.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What techniques are used in the lines "She was ours/ In Massachusetts, in Virginia" (lines 3-4)?

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

3. The repetition of the word "deed" in line 13 is an example of which technique?

(see the answer keys)

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