The Death Bed Quizzes

The Death Bed Quiz

1 Which best describes the poem's speaker?
Unidentified, third-person

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
2 Describe the form.
Seven sextets

Six sextets

Seven stanzas composed of different lengths

Six stanzas composed of different lengths
3 What senses are engaged in this poem?
Visual, tactile, auditory

Visual

Auditory, gustatory, olfactory

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

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

"in the wings of sleep"

Water
5 Which best describes a metaphor?
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 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
6 Which is not an example of alliteration?
"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"

"Light many lamps and gather round his bed. / Lend him your...will to live"
7 What is alliteration?
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"

A word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect
8 What is the reader implored to do?
Row down a river.

Protest the war by writing letters.

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

Enlist and fight.
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?
"Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;"

"He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped"

"Gently and slowly washing life away"

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

flickered

music

thudding
12 What collection was this poem published in?
The Daffodil Murderer

The War Poems of Sigfried Sassoon

The Old Huntsman and Other Poems

Counter-Attack and Other Poems
13 What is Sassoon best known for today?
His satires

His novels

His romantic pastoral poetry

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

Robert Graves

Isaac Rosenberg

Wilfred Owen
15 Which of the following is not a theme in the poem?
Criticizing the Military Establishment

Satirizing military authority

Mortality

Death and Sleep as a Journey
16 Who or what is personified in the poem?
an animal that broke into the ward

the soldier

death

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"

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 word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect
18 What does water symbolize?
Tranquility

Summertime

The soldier's acceptance of his death

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness
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 guns the soldier used in battle

They refer to the conflict of World War I
20 Why is death not capitalized in the poem?
Death is capitalized in the poem

Unspecified, but perhaps to suggest a humble sense

Because it is an inanimate process.

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

In the final line

In the first stanza

Never
22 Which words become an anaphora?
Water and summer

Light and summer

Summer and night

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

night sky

starless sky

waves of death
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 there is always hope

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

To increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

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