“… as we were we gave ourselves outright/ (The deed of gift was many deeds of war…”: A Deconstruction Reading of Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright” Anonymous College

In “Gift Outright”, Robert Frost, explicates the quiescence the American land to all the Americans who he refers to as (we). The poem places interest on the history of the American land that includes the fundamental mileposts such as imperialism, the American Revolutionary War and Manifest destiny. The poem’s title implies that the American land is an unqualified gift for all the American people; being on the land gives them the unconditional prerogative of delighting in the “gift”. The ideological aim of Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright” is to advocate for the ideal of American unanimity by bringing into play the American land.

The first three lines of the poem accentuate the ideological aim. The speaker says, “The land was ours before we were the land's./ She was our land more than a hundred years/Before we were her people. She was ours (Lines 1-3). These lines give emphasis to the history of the land in a way that strengthens the part that the land has played in bringing together all the Americans. According to the lines, the people possessed the land, and the land had possession of them. The mutuality ownership between the land and the people makes it a symbol for amalgamating all the people. The people held the land for a...