remains Flashcards
‘probably armed, possibly not’
plosives
↳ harsh tone, perhaps critical of himself
modal verbs used
↳ ‘probably’ is more sure than possibly to show how he is trying to justify his upcoming actions (may have killed an innocent man)
parallelism
↳ emphasises his state of confliction
i see every round as it rips through his life, i see broad daylight on the other side’
repetition: ‘i see’
↳ repeated perhaps to emphasise how desensitised the soldier is, while seeing all the violence occurring, he has no problem
powerful verbs: ‘rips’
shows the brutality of war
↳ ‘r’ and ‘p’ sounds aggressive, mimicking bullets
imagery: ‘broad daylight’ & the quote as a whole
L creates empathy in the reader for the man who is being shot (due to the cruelty of the actions) and resentment for the actions, the man is being treated inhumanely (tossed into the back of the repeated perhaps to emphasise how desensitised the soldier is, while seeing all the violence occurring, he has no problem
powerful verbs: ‘rips’
↳ showsthe brutality of war
↳ ‘r’ and ‘p’ sounds aggressive, mimicking bullets
imagery: ‘broad daylight’ & the quote as a whole
↳ creates empathy in the reader for the man who is being shot (due to the cruelty of the actions) and resentment for the actions, the man is being treated inhumanely (tossed into the back of the lorry) we see how all war creates is damage, trauma and sadness
↳ people see bright lights & flashes of life when they die
‘sleep, and he’s probably armed possibly not’
repetition: ‘probably armed, possibly not’
↳ the memory of him shooting the looter haunts him, especially the fact that he may have killed an innocent man
↳ psychological effects of war on a soldier: hallucinations, PTSD, trauma, turmoil
↳ even in his sleep his memories haunt him, sleep is meant to heal & recover a person but it still causes pain
‘he’s here in my head when i close my eyes’
‘h’ alliteration:
↳ ‘h’ creates a heavy sound like the situation weighs on his mind all the time
‘his blood shadow stays on the street’
metaphor: ‘blood shadow’
↳ a shadow follows you everywhere just like his killing of the man does
↳ blood stains
‘well my self and somebody else and somebody else’ ⇢ ‘his bloody life in my bloody hands’
possessive pronoun: ‘my’
↳ the speaker has finally accepted his part in the man’s death & realises that he is guilty of murder, he has stopped taking comfort in collective guilt and started singularly blaming himself for the death of the man
(metaphoric & literal statement)
‘and the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out-‘
‘d’ plosives
↳ he resents the fact that he can’t rid his memory of the looter
modal verb: ‘won’t’
↳ it’s impossible to rid himself of his guilt and memory of the shooting, constantly on his mind
verb: ‘flush’
↳ flushing something is cleansing yourself, the speaker hopes to completely absolve himself of guilt and have a fresh slate, he wants to get rid of a hindrance/liability
caesura
L shows that he can’t escape his actions
‘on another occasion we set out’
colloquial & anecdotal tone:
↳ everything he’s mentioning before the volta is common to him
‘pain itself, the image of agony’
caesura:
↳ emphasises the violent act that was done
↳ creates a pause when the reader says it, perhaps shows how the speaker stopped in the moment due to the immensity of the horror
imagery:
↳ the soldier switches to descriptive language, perhaps his mindset begins to change from here, which is why the caesura is used, to reflect his change
‘end of story, except not really’
volta:
↳ the man’s life has ended (pain has ended and so has the speaker’s (his pain has started)
end-stopped line:
↳ his trauma will eternally effect him
themes
violence, guilt, conflict, memory, the psychological effects of war
structure of remains
-colloquial
-eight stanzas (the first seven are quantrains but the last only has two lines, perhaps to reflect the disintegration of the man’s mental health)
context
-remains’ is from armitage’s 2008 collection, ‘the not dead’, which looks at the effects of war on ex-soldiers - damaged, exhausted men who return from war alive, but never fully with their minds
-this poem is based on the account of a british soldier who served in iraq
meaning of the title
-the title is ironic and a pun
-‘remains’ refers to the dead body of the looter who was shot and killed, but also to the mental torment and guilt suffered by the soldier, which stays with him long after the period of action in the war zone
-it is both a verb and a noun
who wrote remains?
simon armitage
