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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 7 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

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

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)?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. 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)?

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

4. Explain the poem's title.

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How do repetition and alliteration support the tone of "The Gift Outright"? Do they serve other purposes, such as creating emphasis or clarifying the relationships among ideas? Write an essay in which you describe how these two techniques are used in the poem and analyze how they contribute to both tone and meaning. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from the poem; cite all borrowed language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

What spiritual claims does "The Gift Outright" make about the foundation and expansion of the American nation? How does diction like "surrender" and "salvation" advance its spiritual claim? What hidden premises are introduced into Frost's argument by the implied spiritual claims being made in this poem? If these hidden premises are disputed, does this weaken the overall effect of the argument being made in "The Gift Outright"? Write an essay that analyzes the poem's spiritual claims and considers how these claims impact the poem's overall argument. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from the poem; cite all borrowed language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

What other patriotic poems have you read or heard? Do these, like "The Gift Outright," skirt past painful facts in order to celebrate a nation's achievements? Are there patriotic poems that are able to acknowledge a nation's faults, or would this make them no longer "patriotic"? Choose a poem that is widely considered to be "patriotic" and compare it to "The Gift Outright," analyzing the extent to which either poem is able to present a balanced and realistic picture of the nation it celebrates. In your conclusion, comment on the purposes of patriotic poetry and whether "balance" and "realism" are desirable qualities in this genre of poetry. Support your assertions with evidence from both poems, and cite all sources in MLA format.

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