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

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

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

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)?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. Explain the poem's title.

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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