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

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

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

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

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

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

4. 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)?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. Explain the poem's title.

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

5. 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)?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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