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

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

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

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

5. What does line 12 make clear is the "Gift" in the title "The Gift Outright"?
(a) Americans themselves.
(b) Freedom from England.
(c) The land Americans live on.
(d) Surrender and salvation.

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

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

5. 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)?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Explain the poem's title.

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

4. 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)?

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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