The Death Bed Quizzes

The Death Bed Quiz

1 Which best describes the poem's speaker?
Omniscient, third-person; addresses the reader using second-person

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

Unidentified, third-person

All-knowing, first-person, addresses the reader using second-person
2 Describe the form.
Six sextets

Seven sextets

Seven stanzas composed of different lengths

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

Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

Visual

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

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

"in the wings of sleep"

"silence heaped / Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls"
5 Which best describes a metaphor?
A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated using the words "like" or "as"

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 word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effec
6 Which is not an example of alliteration?
"Light many lamps and gather round his bed. / Lend him your...will to live"

"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"
7 What is alliteration?
A word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect

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"
8 What is the reader implored to do?
Row down a river.

Enlist and fight.

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

World War Two

Death does not care about justice
10 Which quote best foreshadows the soldier's death?
"Shuddering because that evil thing had passed."

"He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped"

"Gently and slowly washing life away"

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

thudding

trickling

flickered
12 What collection was this poem published in?
The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon

The Daffodil Murderer

Counter-Attack and Other Poems

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems
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?
Robert Graves

Wilfred Owen

Isaac Rosenberg

Rupert Brooke
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?
an animal that broke into the ward

death

death and the soldier's pain

the soldier
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

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness

Tranquility
19 Why are the guns at the end specified as "the"?
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

They refer to the guns the soldier used in battle
20 Why is death not capitalized in the poem?
Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a weak sense

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a humble 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 second-to-last stanza

Never

In the first stanza

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__"
night sky

waves of death

starless sky

waves of pain
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 cruelly trick the reader

To increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

To show that there is always hope

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