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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. Who is the author of "The Gift Outright"?

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

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 the phrase "unstoried, artless, unenhanced" (line 15)?

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. Describe the form of "The Gift Outright."

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

3. 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)?

4. Explain the poem's title.

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

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

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

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

What does diction with legal connotations add to "The Gift Outright"? How does diction with religious or sexual overtones add layers of meaning to the poem? How do these three types of diction interact with one another? What else do you observe about this poem's diction: is it formal or informal, abstract or concrete? How does the general diction of the poem create a framework for understanding the legal, sexual, and religious diction? How does the general diction itself help to create meaning? Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim about diction in "The Gift Outright." Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from the poem; cite all borrowed language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

What other patriotic poems have you read or heard? Do these, like "The Gift Outright," skirt past painful facts in order to celebrate a nation's achievements? Are there patriotic poems that are able to acknowledge a nation's faults, or would this make them no longer "patriotic"? Choose a poem that is widely considered to be "patriotic" and compare it to "The Gift Outright," analyzing the extent to which either poem is able to present a balanced and realistic picture of the nation it celebrates. In your conclusion, comment on the purposes of patriotic poetry and whether "balance" and "realism" are desirable qualities in this genre of poetry. Support your assertions with evidence from both poems, and cite all sources in MLA format.

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