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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 7 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What technique is used in the lines "She was our land more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" (lines 2-3)?

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

3. Who is the author of "The Gift Outright"?

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

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

Short Essay Questions

1. What does the speaker claim makes the colonists "weak," and what is the solution to this weakness (line 8)?

2. To whom is it implied the pronouns "our" and "we" refer in this poem?

3. What is implied by the diction the speaker uses to describe the lands yet to be conquered by American settlers: "unstoried, artless, unenhanced" (line 15)?

4. Explain the poem's title.

5. What does the speaker mean by "the land vaguely realizing westward" (line 14)?

6. Explain the synecdoche in line 4, "In Massachusetts, in Virginia."

7. Describe the form of "The Gift Outright."

(see the answer keys)

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