Attack (Sassoon poem) Quizzes

1 Which point(s) of view is/are used in the poem?

Second-person

Second and third-person

First-person

Third-person
2 Describe the speaker.

The speaker is a commanding officer.

An unidentified speaker witnesses a battle taking place. The final plea to Jesus to stop the violence indicates that the speaker is either participating in the battle, or is speaking on behalf of the soldiers.

The speaker is Sassoon himself.

The speaker is a soldier who experiences shell shock as a result of the bristling fire.
3 How many lines does the poem have?

14

13

11

12
4 What poetic form does "Attack" most closely resemble?

Epic

Villanelle

Sestina

Sonnet
5 What kinds of poems deal with morning and the departure of lovers?

Sonnet

Shakespeare

Love poem

Aubade
6 Describe the sunlight in the poem.

Pale yellow, filtering

Wild purple, glowering

Bright purple, glowing

Strong and blinding
7 Define "dun"

Of a dull grayish-brown color.

A horse

The state of being finished

A bright green color
8 What first emerges in the morning light?

The ridge

The soldiers

The trench

The tanks
9 Which is not an example of alliteration?

The barrage roars and lifts

time ticks blank and busy

The menacing scarred slope

Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
10 What is alliteration?

The use of "like" or "as" to make a comparison.

The repetition of the sound of a vowel or diphthong in nonrhyming stressed syllables near enough to each other for the echo to be discernible

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

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
11 Why are the soldiers "clumsily bowed"?

They are deathly afraid.

They bow to their superiors

They have been crippled.

They are weighed down by gear.
12 What is a barrage?

A battlefield

Soldiers' accommodations

A place where military gear is stored

A concentrated artillery bombardment over a wide area
13 What does not get personified in the poem?

The slope

The sunlight

The mud

Hope
14 Which is example of personification?

Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,

They leave their trenches, going over the top,

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun

And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, / Flounders in mud
15 What is personification?

The occurrence of a poet humanizing someone.

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

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.

The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form
16 What is the form?

Free verse

Strict iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter, with some exceptions in syllabic stress

Blank verse
17 Finish this quote: "While time ticks__"

in their chests

meaninglessly

blank and brutal on their wrists

blank and busy on their wrists
18 Who does the speaker plead to in the final line?

Jesus

His commanders

His mother

God
19 What is the tone?

Pointed, Angry, Violent

Acerbic, Violent, Uncanny

Eerie, Desperate, Violent

Bitter, Tragic, Reflective
20 Which detail best foreshadows the violence to come?

The smoke smolders

The scarred slope is menacing

The dawn light makes the ridge visible

Men jostle and climb to
21 Which of the following is used in the poem?

Onomatopoeia

Understatement

Personification

Hyperbole
22 Which collection was this poem published in?

Collected Poems

The Old Huntsman

The War Poems

Counter-Attack and Other Poems
23 How was the collection received?

Well, due to its truthful and harrowing accounts of World War I.

Well, though Sassoon was then hospitalized for shell shock

Poorly, as the details were too grotesque

Poorly, Sassoon was then hospitalized for shell shock
24 Which of the following is not a theme?

Nature

The Horrors of Warfare

Explicitly Criticizing the British Public

Anonymity
25 Which line best demonstrates the theme of Anonymity?

Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud

The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,

And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists

Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,

Attack (Sassoon poem)

by Siegfried Sassoon

Attack (Sassoon poem) Quiz

Attack (Sassoon poem) Questions and Answers

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