The Death Bed Quizzes

The Death Bed Quiz

1 Which best describes the poem's speaker?
Omniscient, third-person; addresses the reader using second-person

Unidentified, third-person

All-knowing, first-person, addresses the reader using second-person

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

Six stanzas composed of different lengths

Seven stanzas composed of different lengths

Seven sextets
3 What senses are engaged in this poem?
Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

Visual

Visual, tactile, auditory

All senses
4 Which of the following is not a metaphor in the poem?
"his mortal shore / Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death"

Water

"in the wings of sleep"

"silence heaped / Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls"
5 Which best describes a metaphor?
The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words

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

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

A description of one thing by way of another, unrelated thing
6 Which is not an example of alliteration?
"Silence and safety"

"Light many lamps and gather round his bed. / Lend him your...will to live"

"That soak the woods; not the harsh rain"

"And there was silence in the summer night; / Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep"
7 What is alliteration?
A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated

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

A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated using the words "like" or "as"
8 What is the reader implored to do?
Enlist and fight.

Protest the war by writing letters.

Care for the dying soldier's physical and energetic needs.

Row down a river.
9 What is the major conflict of the poem?
World War One

Whether or not the young soldier will encounter his death

Death does not care about justice

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

"Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;"

"Shuddering because that evil thing had passed."

"He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped"
11 Which is an example of onomatopoeia?
flickered

trickling

thudding

music
12 What collection was this poem published in?
The Daffodil Murderer

The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon

Counter-Attack and Other Poems

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems
13 What is Sassoon best known for today?
His romantic pastoral poetry

His novels

His satires

His angry and compassionate anti-war poems
14 Which fellow soldier-poet named "The Death Bed" as the "finest poem" in the collection?
Wilfred Owen

Robert Graves

Rupert Brooke

Isaac Rosenberg
15 Which of the following is not a theme in the poem?
Mortality

Satirizing military authority

Death and Sleep as a Journey

Criticizing the Military Establishment
16 Who or what is personified in the poem?
death

the soldier

an animal that broke into the ward

death and the soldier's pain
17 What is personification?
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

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

the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.
18 What does water symbolize?
Summertime

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness

The soldier's acceptance of his death

Tranquility
19 Why are the guns at the end specified as "the"?
There is no reason for the specification

They refer to the conflict of World War II

They refer to the guns the soldier used in battle

They refer to the conflict of World War I
20 Why is death not capitalized in the poem?
Because it is an inanimate process.

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a humble sense

Death is capitalized in the poem

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a weak sense
21 Where in the poem does Sassoon clarify that the drowsing man is dying?
In the first stanza

In the final line

In the second-to-last stanza

Never
22 Which words become an anaphora?
Water and night

Summer and night

Water and summer

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

waves of death

night sky

starless sky
24 What is anaphora?
The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words

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

A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.
25 Why does the speaker give a false sense of hope that the soldier will live?
To cruelly trick the reader

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

To show that there is always hope

To increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

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