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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 3 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

4. What is the antecedent of "it" in the phrase "it was ourselves" (line 9)?
(a) "Still colonials" (line 5).
(b) "What we now no more possessed" (line 7).
(c) "Something we were withholding" (line 8).
(d) "What we still were unpossessed by" (line 6).

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

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

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

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

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

10. According to the poem's second sentence, how did "we" find "salvation"?
(a) By realizing our own weakness.
(b) By dedicating ourselves to the Christian God.
(c) By fully surrendering ourselves to the land.
(d) By finding the courage to fight England.

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

12. What technique is used in the lines "She was our land more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" (lines 2-3)?
(a) Symbolism.
(b) Metonymy.
(c) Personification.
(d) Alliteration.

13. 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)?
(a) Epistrophe and chiasmus.
(b) Antithesis and oxymoron.
(c) Chiasmus and antithesis.
(d) Oxymoron and epistrophe.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

3. What is the implied antecedent of "our" and "we" in lines 1 and 2?

(see the answer keys)

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