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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 lines "She was our land more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" (lines 2-3)?
(a) Symbolism.
(b) Metonymy.
(c) Personification.
(d) Alliteration.

2. What is the implied antecedent of "our" and "we" in lines 1 and 2?
(a) Farmers.
(b) Colonists.
(c) Americans.
(d) Revolutionaries.

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What is alluded to in the phrase "the land vaguely realizing westward" (line 14)?

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

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

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

5. Which technique is used in the first line, "The land was ours before we were the land’s"?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. 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)?

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

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

5. Explain the poem's title.

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

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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