The Death Bed Quizzes

1 Which best describes the poem's speaker?

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

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

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

Unidentified, third-person
2 Describe the form.

Seven stanzas composed of different lengths

Six stanzas composed of different lengths

Six sextets

Seven sextets
3 What senses are engaged in this poem?

Visual, tactile, auditory

Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

Visual

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"

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

Water

"in the wings of sleep"
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?

"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 using the words "like" or "as"

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

A word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect
8 What is the reader implored to do?

Row down a river.

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

Protest the war by writing letters.

Enlist and fight.
9 What is the major conflict of the poem?

Death does not care about justice

World War Two

Whether or not the young soldier will encounter his death

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

"He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped"

"Shuddering because that evil thing had passed."

"Gently and slowly washing life away"

"Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;"
11 Which is an example of onomatopoeia?

trickling

thudding

flickered

music
12 What collection was this poem published in?

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems

The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon

Counter-Attack and Other Poems

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

His romantic pastoral poetry

His angry and compassionate anti-war poems

His novels

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

Wilfred Owen

Rupert Brooke

Robert Graves

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

Mortality

Satirizing military authority

Criticizing the Military Establishment

Death and Sleep as a Journey
16 Who or what is personified in the poem?

death

an animal that broke into the ward

death and the soldier's pain

the soldier
17 What is personification?

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.

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"
18 What does water symbolize?

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness

Tranquility

The soldier's acceptance of his death

Summertime
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 I

There is no reason for the specification

They refer to the conflict of World War II
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

In the final line

Never
22 Which words become an anaphora?

Water and night

Light and summer

Water and summer

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

starless sky

night sky

waves of pain

waves of death
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 there is always hope

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

The Death Bed

by Siegfried Sassoon

The Death Bed Quiz

The Death Bed Questions and Answers

Study Guide for The Death Bed