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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Section 1: "The Gift Outright," Lines 1-16.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

3. What technique is used in the phrase "unstoried, artless, unenhanced" (line 15)?
(a) Asyndeton.
(b) Euphemism.
(c) Apostrophe.
(d) Assonance.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. 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)?

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

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

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

(see the answer key)

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