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 soldier using second-person

Omniscient, third-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?
All senses

Visual, tactile, auditory

Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

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

Water

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

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

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
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

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

Row down a river.

Enlist and fight.

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?
"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

flickered

trickling

music
12 What collection was this poem published in?
Counter-Attack and Other Poems

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems

The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon

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

His romantic pastoral poetry

His angry and compassionate anti-war poems

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

Rupert Brooke

Wilfred Owen

Robert Graves
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?
an animal that broke into the ward

death

the soldier

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"?
They refer to the conflict of World War I

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
20 Why is death not capitalized in the poem?
Because it is an inanimate process.

Death is capitalized in the poem

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a weak sense

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

Never

In the first stanza

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

Summer and night

Water and summer

Water 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 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 show that justice prevails when there is hope

To cruelly trick the reader

To show that there is always hope

To increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

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