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

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

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

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) Personification.
(b) Symbolism.
(c) Alliteration.
(d) Metonymy.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What technique is used in the line "Such as she was, such as she would become" (line 16)?

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

3. 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)?

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

5. In line 15, what is the speaker calling "unstoried, artless, unenhanced"?

Short Essay Questions

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

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. Describe the form of "The Gift Outright."

5. Explain the poem's title.

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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