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

2. 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.

3. What techniques are used in the lines "She was ours/ In Massachusetts, in Virginia" (lines 3-4)?
(a) Synecdoche and asyndeton.
(b) Antithesis and synecdoche.
(c) Asyndeton and apostrophe.
(d) Apostrophe and antithesis.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

4. What does line 12 make clear is the "Gift" in the title "The Gift Outright"?

5. What is the antecedent of "it" in the phrase "it was ourselves" (line 9)?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

5. Explain the poem's title.

6. 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)?

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

(see the answer keys)

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