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 reader using second-person

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

Unidentified, third-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?
Visual

All senses

Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

Visual, tactile, auditory
4 Which of the following is not a metaphor in the poem?
"silence heaped / Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls"

Water

"in the wings of sleep"

"his mortal shore / Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death"
5 Which best describes a metaphor?
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

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?
"Silence and safety"

"And there was silence in the summer night; / Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep"

"That soak the woods; not the harsh rain"

"Light many lamps and gather round his bed. / Lend him your...will to live"
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 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
8 What is the reader implored to do?
Protest the war by writing letters.

Row down a river.

Enlist and fight.

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

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

"He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped"
11 Which is an example of onomatopoeia?
trickling

music

flickered

thudding
12 What collection was this poem published in?
The Old Huntsman and Other Poems

The Daffodil Murderer

Counter-Attack and Other Poems

The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon
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?
Isaac Rosenberg

Rupert Brooke

Robert Graves

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

Mortality

Satirizing military authority

Criticizing the Military Establishment
16 Who or what is personified in the poem?
death

the soldier

an animal that broke into the ward

death and the soldier's pain
17 What is personification?
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

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 using the words "like" or "as"
18 What does water symbolize?
Tranquility

The soldier's acceptance of his death

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness

Summertime
19 Why are the guns at the end specified as "the"?
They refer to the conflict of World War II

There is no reason for the specification

They refer to the conflict of World War I

They refer to the guns the soldier used in battle
20 Why is death not capitalized in the poem?
Because it is an inanimate process.

Death is capitalized in the poem

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a weak sense

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a humble sense
21 Where in the poem does Sassoon clarify that the drowsing man is dying?
In the second-to-last stanza

Never

In the final line

In the first stanza
22 Which words become an anaphora?
Light and summer

Summer and night

Water and summer

Water and night
23 Finish this quote: "Lipped by the inward, moonless__"
starless sky

waves of pain

waves of death

night sky
24 What is anaphora?
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 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.
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 increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

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