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

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

All-knowing, first-person, addresses the reader using second-person
2 Describe the form.
Six stanzas composed of different lengths

Six sextets

Seven sextets

Seven stanzas composed of different lengths
3 What senses are engaged in this poem?
Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

Visual

All senses

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

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

Water

"in the wings of sleep"
5 Which best describes a metaphor?
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

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"

"That soak the woods; not the harsh rain"

"Silence and safety"

"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 using the words "like" or "as"

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
8 What is the reader implored to do?
Row down a river.

Enlist and fight.

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

Protest the war by writing letters.
9 What is the major conflict of the poem?
Whether or not the young soldier will encounter his death

World War One

World War Two

Death does not care about justice
10 Which quote best foreshadows the soldier's death?
"Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;"

"Gently and slowly washing life away"

"He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped"

"Shuddering because that evil thing had passed."
11 Which is an example of onomatopoeia?
thudding

trickling

flickered

music
12 What collection was this poem published in?
The Old Huntsman and Other Poems

Counter-Attack and Other Poems

The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon

The Daffodil Murderer
13 What is Sassoon best known for today?
His satires

His romantic pastoral poetry

His novels

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

Robert Graves

Rupert Brooke

Wilfred Owen
15 Which of the following is not a theme in the poem?
Death and Sleep as a Journey

Criticizing the Military Establishment

Satirizing military authority

Mortality
16 Who or what is personified in the poem?
death

the soldier

death and the soldier's pain

an animal that broke into the ward
17 What is personification?
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"

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?
The soldier's acceptance of his death

Tranquility

Summertime

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness
19 Why are the guns at the end specified as "the"?
They refer to the conflict of World War II

There is no reason for the specification

They refer to the conflict of World War I

They refer to the guns the soldier used in battle
20 Why is death not capitalized in the poem?
Because it is an inanimate process.

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a weak sense

Death is capitalized in the poem

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

In the final line

In the first stanza

Never
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

night sky

waves of death

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.

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

A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated
25 Why does the speaker give a false sense of hope that the soldier will live?
To cruelly trick the reader

To increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

To show that there is always hope

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