The Death Bed Quizzes

The Death Bed Quiz

1 Which best describes the poem's speaker?
All-knowing, first-person, addresses the reader using second-person

Omniscient, third-person; addresses the reader using second-person

Unidentified, third-person

Omniscient, third-person; addresses the soldier using second-person
2 Describe the form.
Six sextets

Seven sextets

Six stanzas composed of different lengths

Seven stanzas composed of different lengths
3 What senses are engaged in this poem?
Visual

All senses

Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

Visual, tactile, auditory
4 Which of the following is not a metaphor in the poem?
"in the wings of sleep"

Water

"silence heaped / Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls"

"his mortal shore / Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death"
5 Which best describes a metaphor?
A word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effec

A description of one thing by way of another, unrelated thing

A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated using the words "like" or "as"

The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words
6 Which is not an example of alliteration?
"Light many lamps and gather round his bed. / Lend him your...will to live"

"And there was silence in the summer night; / Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep"

"That soak the woods; not the harsh rain"

"Silence and safety"
7 What is alliteration?
The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words

A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated

A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated using the words "like" or "as"

A word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect
8 What is the reader implored to do?
Enlist and fight.

Row down a river.

Protest the war by writing letters.

Care for the dying soldier's physical and energetic needs.
9 What is the major conflict of the poem?
World War Two

Whether or not the young soldier will encounter his death

Death does not care about justice

World War One
10 Which quote best foreshadows the soldier's death?
"Gently and slowly washing life away"

"Shuddering because that evil thing had passed."

"He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped"

"Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;"
11 Which is an example of onomatopoeia?
trickling

thudding

flickered

music
12 What collection was this poem published in?
The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon

Counter-Attack and Other Poems

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems

The Daffodil Murderer
13 What is Sassoon best known for today?
His angry and compassionate anti-war poems

His romantic pastoral poetry

His novels

His satires
14 Which fellow soldier-poet named "The Death Bed" as the "finest poem" in the collection?
Isaac Rosenberg

Wilfred Owen

Robert Graves

Rupert Brooke
15 Which of the following is not a theme in the poem?
Satirizing military authority

Mortality

Criticizing the Military Establishment

Death and Sleep as a Journey
16 Who or what is personified in the poem?
death and the soldier's pain

the soldier

an animal that broke into the ward

death
17 What is personification?
A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated using the words "like" or "as"

the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.

A word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect

The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words
18 What does water symbolize?
Summertime

Tranquility

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness

The soldier's acceptance of his death
19 Why are the guns at the end specified as "the"?
They refer to the conflict of World War I

They refer to the guns the soldier used in battle

There is no reason for the specification

They refer to the conflict of World War II
20 Why is death not capitalized in the poem?
Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a humble sense

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a weak sense

Death is capitalized in the poem

Because it is an inanimate process.
21 Where in the poem does Sassoon clarify that the drowsing man is dying?
In the first stanza

Never

In the second-to-last stanza

In the final line
22 Which words become an anaphora?
Water and summer

Light and summer

Summer and night

Water and night
23 Finish this quote: "Lipped by the inward, moonless__"
waves of pain

starless sky

night sky

waves of death
24 What is anaphora?
A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated

The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.

The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.
25 Why does the speaker give a false sense of hope that the soldier will live?
To show that there is always hope

To increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

To cruelly trick the reader

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