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

2. 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.

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Explain the poem's title.

(see the answer keys)

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