The Death Bed Quizzes

1 Which best describes the poem's speaker?

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

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

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

Unidentified, third-person
2 Describe the form.

Six stanzas composed of different lengths

Seven sextets

Seven stanzas composed of different lengths

Six sextets
3 What senses are engaged in this poem?

Visual

Visual, tactile, auditory

Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

All senses
4 Which of the following is not a metaphor in the poem?

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

"his mortal shore / Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death"

"in the wings of sleep"

Water
5 Which best describes a metaphor?

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 effec

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

"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"

"Light many lamps and gather round his bed. / Lend him your...will to live"
7 What is alliteration?

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 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
8 What is the reader implored to do?

Enlist and fight.

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

Protest the war by writing letters.

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

World War Two

World War One

Whether or not the young soldier will encounter his death

Death does not care about justice
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?

thudding

trickling

music

flickered
12 What collection was this poem published in?

The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems

Counter-Attack and Other Poems

The Daffodil Murderer
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?

Death and Sleep as a Journey

Criticizing the Military Establishment

Mortality

Satirizing military authority
16 Who or what is personified in the poem?

the soldier

an animal that broke into the ward

death and the soldier's pain

death
17 What is personification?

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

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
18 What does water symbolize?

Summertime

The soldier's acceptance of his death

Tranquility

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness
19 Why are the guns at the end specified as "the"?

They refer to the guns the soldier used in battle

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
20 Why is death not capitalized in the poem?

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a humble sense

Death is capitalized in the poem

Because it is an inanimate process.

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a weak 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

Never

In the first stanza
22 Which words become an anaphora?

Water and night

Water and summer

Light and summer

Summer and night
23 Finish this quote: "Lipped by the inward, moonless__"

waves of death

waves of pain

night sky

starless sky
24 What is anaphora?

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.

The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words
25 Why does the speaker give a false sense of hope that the soldier will live?

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

To increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

To cruelly trick the reader

To show that there is always hope

The Death Bed

by Siegfried Sassoon

The Death Bed Quiz

The Death Bed Questions and Answers

Study Guide for The Death Bed