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

Unidentified, third-person

Omniscient, third-person; addresses the reader using second-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?
"silence heaped / Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls"

"in the wings of sleep"

Water

"his mortal shore / Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death"
5 Which best describes a metaphor?
A word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effec

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

Enlist and fight.

Protest the war by writing letters.

Row down a river.
9 What is the major conflict of the poem?
World War Two

Whether or not the young soldier will encounter his death

World War One

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

"Gently and slowly washing life away"

"He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped"

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

trickling

thudding

flickered
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 romantic pastoral poetry

His novels

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?
Rupert Brooke

Robert Graves

Isaac Rosenberg

Wilfred Owen
15 Which of the following is not a theme in the poem?
Satirizing military authority

Mortality

Criticizing the Military Establishment

Death and Sleep as a Journey
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?
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 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
18 What does water symbolize?
The soldier's acceptance of his death

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness

Summertime

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

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

Death is capitalized in the poem

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a weak sense

Because it is an inanimate process.
21 Where in the poem does Sassoon clarify that the drowsing man is dying?
Never

In the first stanza

In the final line

In the second-to-last stanza
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__"
waves of pain

starless sky

night sky

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.

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 there is always hope

To cruelly trick the reader

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

To increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

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