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

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

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

4. According to the poem's second sentence, how did "we" find "salvation"?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain the poem's title.

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

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

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

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

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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