View a FREE sample

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

Short Answer Questions

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

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

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

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

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. Explain the poem's title.

5. 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)?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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.

Essay Topic 2

What is the theme of "The Gift Outright"? What is the poem's subject matter, and what claim about Americans and the land does it advance? What is the poem's tone, and how is it created? How do the poem's diction and its use of chiasmus, parallelism, and repetition contribute to its meaning? How does line 13 impact the poem's overall meaning? To what extent does "The Gift Outright" either acknowledge or elide the violence integral to the nation's foundation and expansion? Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the theme of this poem. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from the poem; cite all borrowed language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

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.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 821 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample