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

Unidentified, third-person

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

Omniscient, third-person; addresses the soldier using second-person
2 Describe the form.
Seven stanzas composed of different lengths

Six stanzas composed of different lengths

Seven sextets

Six sextets
3 What senses are engaged in this poem?
Visual, tactile, auditory

Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

All senses

Visual
4 Which of the following is not a metaphor in the poem?
"in the wings of sleep"

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

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

Water
5 Which best describes a metaphor?
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 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 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

A comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated using the words "like" or "as"
8 What is the reader implored to do?
Enlist and fight.

Row down a river.

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 Two

World War One

Death does not care about justice
10 Which quote best foreshadows the soldier's death?
"Gently and slowly washing life away"

"He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped"

"Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;"

"Shuddering because that evil thing had passed."
11 Which is an example of onomatopoeia?
flickered

thudding

music

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

Counter-Attack and Other Poems

The Daffodil Murderer

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems
13 What is Sassoon best known for today?
His novels

His romantic pastoral poetry

His satires

His angry and compassionate anti-war poems
14 Which fellow soldier-poet named "The Death Bed" as the "finest poem" in the collection?
Rupert Brooke

Isaac Rosenberg

Robert Graves

Wilfred Owen
15 Which of the following is not a theme in the poem?
Death and Sleep as a Journey

Criticizing the Military Establishment

Mortality

Satirizing military authority
16 Who or what is personified in the poem?
the soldier

death

an animal that broke into the ward

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"

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
18 What does water symbolize?
Summertime

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness

Tranquility

The soldier's acceptance of his death
19 Why are the guns at the end specified as "the"?
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

They refer to the conflict of World War I
20 Why is death not capitalized in the poem?
Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a weak sense

Because it is an inanimate process.

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a humble sense

Death is capitalized in the poem
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

Water and summer

Summer and night

Water and night
23 Finish this quote: "Lipped by the inward, moonless__"
waves of death

starless sky

waves of pain

night sky
24 What is anaphora?
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

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 show that justice prevails when there is hope

To show that there is always hope

To increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

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