3️⃣ Remains Flashcards
(21 cards)
Who was it written by?
Simon Armitage
Who is it based on?
Guardsman Tromans
A machine gunner based in the Iraq war who has PTSD as a result of his vivid memories of killing a man and had toxic response from institution of the army when asking for support and was emasculated
He reported to alcohol and drugs
What is the poem part of?
The Not Dead collection
A documentary and poetry collection about soldiers who experienced psychological and physiological effects of war
Remains title
Connotations of lingering thoughts but also corpses and physical remains
Perspective
1st person emphasises personal nature of poem reminding us that it was a real life experience
On another occasion we get sent out
In medias res (beginning in the middle of the action) creates a conversational and colloquial tone trivialising the man’s death reinforcing the personal and real life experience of the poem
Anecdotal and causal attitudes to death initially
Probably armed, possibly not
Conditional adverbs and present tense
Syntactical parallelism
Endless cycle of stress and torment
Repeated verbatim throughout poem
I see every round as it rips through his life
I see broad daylight on the other side
Anaphora
Present tense shows how he’s reliving his memories
Rips has violent connotations
Visual and graphic imagery emphasises the violence of this war
Tosses his guts back into his body
Lack of care, apathy for human life
End of story, except not really
Memory of the solider remains
Blood shadow
Metaphor demonstrating stain of his blood on the street, a physical reminder of what he’s done
Metaphor for how memory of this occasion remains
Sleep and he’s probably armed, possibly not
Dream and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds
Repetition demonstrates how memory’s won’t leave him (tautological)
Final 3 stanzas
Enjambment and long syntax builds up pace and adds a sense of panic and desperation
He’s here in my head when I close my eyes
Present tense can’t escape image of body
Endless torment
His bloody life in my bloody hands
Symbol of guilt is an Allusion to Macbeth
Bloody is a double entendre- profanity and physical blood and mental anguish
Structure
Gradual decrease in stanza length shows disintegration of speakers state of mind
Shift from 1st person plural to 1st person singular
Becomes more of a personal confession
Present tense
Everpresent trauma
Form
Monologue
Rhyme?
Largely unrhymed quatrains
End of story except not really
Structure
Volta
