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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. In line 15, what is the speaker calling "unstoried, artless, unenhanced"?
(a) The American land.
(b) The history of the United States.
(c) The American people.
(d) The wars fought to secure land.

2. To what event does the phrase "more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" obliquely refer?
(a) The American Civil War.
(b) Columbus's voyage.
(c) The American Revolution.
(d) The Pilgrims' first landing.

3. What technique is used in line 10, "We were withholding from our land of living"?
(a) Metonymy.
(b) Paradox.
(c) Alliteration.
(d) Personification.

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

5. Which is the primary definition of "still" being used in the expression "still colonials" in line 5?
(a) Quiet.
(b) Nevertheless.
(c) Unmoving.
(d) Continuing to be.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to the poem's second sentence, how did "we" find "salvation"?

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

3. The repetition of the word "deed" in line 13 is an example of which technique?

4. 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)?

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

(see the answer key)

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