The Death-Bed - Siegfried Sasoon

Question 1

THEMES (3)

Answer 1

death; war: causes & impacts; futility of war

Question 2

FORM

Answer 2

blank verse; seven stanzas

Question 3

anaphora: water

Answer 3

Water - calm, green, sliding over the weir

Water - a sky-lit alley for his boat

Question 4

Silence and safety; and his mortal shore

Answer 4

Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.

Question 5

anaphora: night

Answer 5

Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward
(…)
Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars

Question 6

Light many lamps and gather round his bed.

Answer 6

Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.

Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.

Question 7

He’s young; he hated War;

Answer 7

how should he die

When cruel old campaigners win safe through?

Question 8

soon he lay

Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.

Answer 8

And death, who’d stepped towards him, paused and stared.

Question 9

But death replied: ‘I choose him.’

Answer 9

So he went,

Question 10

Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep

Answer 10

Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.

Question 11

DICTION

colors (3)

Answer 11

amber light
crimson gloom
‘green’ water

Question 12

what does “amber light” represent?

Answer 12

amber: the color of liquid opiate; amber light: similar to the atmosphere at twilight

can symbolise the boundary between life and death

Question 13

DICTION

water (4)

Answer 13

1. ‘aqueous’ light, ‘soaking’ the soldier as he sleeps
2. moonless waves of death
3. a calm, sliding green (in the soldier’s dream)
4. as rain: trickling peace / Soothing and washing life away.

Question 14

LANGUAGE DEVICES (4)

Answer 14

personification (of death)
rhetorical question
imperative verbs (penultimate stanza)
extended metaphor (water)

Question 15

what is the atmosphere of the poem?

Answer 15

dream-like; the lines between reality and fiction blur. emphasised by use of diction related to water.