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

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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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) Epistrophe and chiasmus.
(c) Chiasmus and antithesis.
(d) Oxymoron and epistrophe.

Short Answer Questions

1. What technique is used in the phrase "unstoried, artless, unenhanced" (line 15)?

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

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

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

5. Which term most accurately describes the meter of "The Gift Outright"?

Short Essay Questions

1. 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)?

2. Explain the poem's title.

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

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

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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