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

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

3. 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) Apostrophe and antithesis.
(d) Synecdoche and asyndeton.

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

5. 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) Metonymy.
(b) Symbolism.
(c) Alliteration.
(d) Personification.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. In line 15, what is the speaker calling "unstoried, artless, unenhanced"?

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

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

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

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

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

6. Explain the poem's title.

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

(see the answer keys)

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