The Death Bed Quizzes

1 Which best describes the poem's speaker?

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

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

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

Unidentified, third-person
2 Describe the form.

Six sextets

Six stanzas composed of different lengths

Seven sextets

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

All senses

Visual

Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

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

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

Water

"in the wings of sleep"

"his mortal shore / Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death"
5 Which best describes a metaphor?

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

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

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

"That soak the woods; not the harsh rain"

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

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

"Silence and safety"
7 What is alliteration?

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

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.

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

Death does not care about justice

World War Two
10 Which quote best foreshadows the soldier's death?

"He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped"

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

"Gently and slowly washing life away"

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

music

thudding

trickling

flickered
12 What collection was this poem published in?

The Daffodil Murderer

Counter-Attack and Other Poems

The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems
13 What is Sassoon best known for today?

His satires

His angry and compassionate anti-war poems

His novels

His romantic pastoral poetry
14 Which fellow soldier-poet named "The Death Bed" as the "finest poem" in the collection?

Rupert Brooke

Isaac Rosenberg

Wilfred Owen

Robert Graves
15 Which of the following is not a theme in the poem?

Death and Sleep as a Journey

Satirizing military authority

Mortality

Criticizing the Military Establishment
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?

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"

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?

Tranquility

The soldier's acceptance of his death

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness

Summertime
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 guns the soldier used in battle

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

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

In the second-to-last stanza

Never

In the final line
22 Which words become an anaphora?

Summer and night

Water and night

Water and summer

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

starless sky

night sky

waves of death

waves of pain
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.

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

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
25 Why does the speaker give a false sense of hope that the soldier will live?

To show that there is always hope

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

To increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

To cruelly trick the reader

The Death Bed

by Siegfried Sassoon

The Death Bed Quiz

The Death Bed Questions and Answers

Study Guide for The Death Bed