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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 7 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. The repetition of the word "deed" in line 13 is an example of which technique?
(a) Epizeuxis.
(b) Epistrophe.
(c) Anadiplosis.
(d) Antanaclasis.

2. What is the implied antecedent of "our" and "we" in lines 1 and 2?
(a) Farmers.
(b) Americans.
(c) Colonists.
(d) Revolutionaries.

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

4. 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.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What technique is used in the phrase "unstoried, artless, unenhanced" (line 15)?

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

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

5. What does line 12 make clear is the "Gift" in the title "The Gift Outright"?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. 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)?

5. Explain the poem's title.

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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