The Death Bed

By: Siegfried Sassoon

Presenter: Eireni Zaparegos

 Summary
The poem begins with the speaker describing the terrible condition a young soldier is
in. The only moments he gets any relief from the pain are those induced by opiates.
When asleep, he can drift through his mind on a river. It is a peaceful symbol for death
and the afterlife that the young man seems to welcome. As the poem progresses the
contrast between his sleeping and waking worlds is further emphasized. When he
moves, he is in incredible agony as if a beast jumped on his body and was trying to tear
him apart. Eventually, death comes to his side, and decides it is time for him to go.
From there, the two depart, and silence falls again over the hospital ward. The last line
reminds the reader that the war rages on right outside the hospital.
 Structure of Poem Rhyme Scheme

‘The Death Bed’ by Siegfried Sassoon is a The poem does not conform to a specific
seven stanza poem that is divide into uneven pattern of rhyme, but there are a few
sets of lines. moments of half, or slant rhymes. This is
accomplished through repetition and the
strategic placement of similar end sounds.
Referencing the half, or slant rhymes, there
is a great example inside the first stanza
with the words “heaped” and “sleep.”
These two phrases are linked thru
consonance and assonance, sleep is simply
missing the extra “d” sound to make it a full
rhyme.
 Narrator Tone

The speaker is a third-person narrator who The tone for "The Death Bed" is pained,
recounts a tale about a soldier on his ponderous and labored, “he could hear it
deathbed. rustling through the dark”, like the
experience of the dying young man.
 Literary Device 1 Literary Device 2

Extended metaphor: there is a extended Repetition: ‘silence and safety’ this phrase
metaphor of water throughout the poem, it is with its sibilant ‘s’ sounds first is used at the
used as a peaceful and soothing force of nature. opening of the poem to describe the hospital
The light is ‘aqueous’, water-like, as it hits the room, which is peaceful, away from the ‘guns’
walls, and he is ‘Lipped… by the moonless and warfare. It then also extends to describe
waves of death’. The soldier then dreams of death at the poem’s close, implying that death
‘Water — a sky-lit alley for his boat’, a vision of is peaceful, protective, and welcoming.
paddling a boat up a river to take him away
from life into the realms of death. The soothing
‘rain’ that occurs outside the hospital also acts
as a calming, purifying force — a ‘trickling
peace / Soothing and washing life away’.