The Death Bed Quizzes

The Death Bed Quiz

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

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

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

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

Seven sextets

Six stanzas composed of different lengths

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

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

Water

"in the wings of sleep"
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

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
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"

"Light many lamps and gather round his bed. / Lend him your...will to live"

"That soak the woods; not the harsh rain"
7 What is alliteration?
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

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
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?
World War One

World War Two

Whether or not the young soldier will encounter his death

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"

"Shuddering because that evil thing had passed."

"Gently and slowly washing life away"
11 Which is an example of onomatopoeia?
music

flickered

trickling

thudding
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 angry and compassionate anti-war poems

His satires

His romantic pastoral poetry

His novels
14 Which fellow soldier-poet named "The Death Bed" as the "finest poem" in the collection?
Robert Graves

Rupert Brooke

Isaac Rosenberg

Wilfred Owen
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?
the soldier

death and the soldier's pain

death

an animal that broke into the ward
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?
The soldier's acceptance of his death

Tranquility

Summertime

The fluid state of the soldier's consciousness
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 I

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 humble sense

Because it is an inanimate process.

Death is capitalized in the poem

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 first stanza

In the final line

Never
22 Which words become an anaphora?
Light and summer

Summer and night

Water and night

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

waves of pain

waves of death

starless 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.

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

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 increase the poem's tension by prolonging the death

To show that justice prevails when there is hope

To cruelly trick the reader

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