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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 7 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What technique is used in the line "Such as she was, such as she would become" (line 16)?

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

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

4. What is the antecedent of "it" in the phrase "it was ourselves" (line 9)?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. Explain the poem's title.

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

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

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

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 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?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the theme of "The Gift Outright"? What is the poem's subject matter, and what claim about Americans and the land does it advance? What is the poem's tone, and how is it created? How do the poem's diction and its use of chiasmus, parallelism, and repetition contribute to its meaning? How does line 13 impact the poem's overall meaning? To what extent does "The Gift Outright" either acknowledge or elide the violence integral to the nation's foundation and expansion? Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the theme of this poem. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from the poem; cite all borrowed language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

How do chiasmus and parallelism support the tone of "The Gift Outright"? Do they serve other purposes, such as creating emphasis or clarifying the relationships among ideas? Write an essay in which you describe how these two techniques are used in the poem and analyze how they contribute to both tone and meaning. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from the poem; cite all borrowed language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

Alabama poet laureate Ashley M. Jones begins her poem "Friendly Skies, or, Black Woman Speaks Herself into God" with the following verse paragraph:

"—we’re taxiing at an airport named after american president ronald reagan. people tell me he was an american hero. sometimes, labels are jumbled in the big dark bag we call manifest destiny. sometimes, things get lost in its velvet mouth."

What do you suppose Jones means when she refers to the "velvet mouth" of manifest destiny? How does skillful rhetoric--evocative diction, rhythmic language, carefully chosen detail, etc.--help to create that "velvet mouth"? Write an essay in which you analyze the "velvet mouth" of "The Gift Outright," demonstrating how Frost's skillful use of language creates an emotional appeal that obscures some of the less appealing facts of American history. Support your assertions with evidence from "The Gift Outright." Cite any borrowed language in MLA format.

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