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

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

3. What technique is used in the lines "She was our land more than a hundred years/ Before we were her people" (lines 2-3)?

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

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 mean by "the land vaguely realizing westward" (line 14)?

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

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

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

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

6. 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)?

7. Explain the poem's title.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How is Amanda Gorman's poem similar to and different from "The Gift Outright"? How do the poems' similarities reflect the cultural significance of presidential inaugurations? How do their differences reflect changing times? Write an essay in which you analyze what the similarities and differences in the meaning and tone of these poems convey about what changes and what remains the same in the meaning and tone of presidential inaugurations. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from both poems; cite all sources in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

Alabama poet laureate Ashley M. Jones begins her poem "Friendly Skies, or, Black Woman Speaks Herself into God" with the following verse paragraph:

"—we’re taxiing at an airport named after american president ronald reagan. people tell me he was an american hero. sometimes, labels are jumbled in the big dark bag we call manifest destiny. sometimes, things get lost in its velvet mouth."

What do you suppose Jones means when she refers to the "velvet mouth" of manifest destiny? How does skillful rhetoric--evocative diction, rhythmic language, carefully chosen detail, etc.--help to create that "velvet mouth"? Write an essay in which you analyze the "velvet mouth" of "The Gift Outright," demonstrating how Frost's skillful use of language creates an emotional appeal that obscures some of the less appealing facts of American history. Support your assertions with evidence from "The Gift Outright." Cite any borrowed language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

How do chiasmus and parallelism 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.

(see the answer keys)

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