remains Flashcards
(11 cards)
message
Shows long lasting effects of war. Shows effect on an individual / leads to isolation and shows how war is life changing.
context
true story
structure
cyclical “probably armed, possibly not” in first and last stanza
Highlights inescapability of these war events and how they continue to effect soldeirs forever
Repitition vs personal pronouns
“myself and somebody else and somebody else” and “all THREE of us open fire / THREE of a kind all letting fly”
syntaxicaly, the sentence becomes dominated by the other soldiers showing he wants to minimise his involvment in the situation as it is full of guilt
This shifts in the final line “his bloody life in MY bloody hands” shows the speaker is taking responsibility. Even if the act was done as a group, the reality is that at home he must deal with the consequences alone.
Enjambment
“three of a kind all letting fly, and i swear / I see every round as it rips through his life”
Sentence running over a whole stanza shows life changing moment.
This break between the action causes the reader to stop, and emphasises how this is the very moment which ruined the soldier’s life. From this point on, the soldier became a different person. The forced break of line and stanza reflects the broken man the soldier became after this event took place.
Caesura
“then im home on leave. But i blink”
End of sentence suggests it is all over, he belives going home will be the end to his trauma however it starts again.
Title and imagery lexical choices
“remains” and “flush it out”
Title remains – left over parts of something that has been used. The soldier has been used in the machine of war and what is left of him is not longer of value. ALTERNATE: remains as in remains of a dead body. However, the soldier doesnt die but metaphorically he could be refering to the death and remains of his past self whom he was before conflict.
Verb flush – connotations of sickness and hygeine it represents how the soldier feels unclean and perhaps diseased after the shooting
Vague language:
“sort of inside out”
impossibility of describing the true horrors of war. It suggests that, despite his army training, the speaker is not prepared for the harsh reality of killing someone.
Colloquialisms
“he legs it up the road”
Shows that this event is an everyday occurence for the soldiers as it is not described as something rare or special. Casual language chanfes when the narrator shoots the looter and th elanguage becomes more sophisticated with graphic imagery such as “every round rips through his life” juxtaposition between two types of language make the events shocking nature more apparent.
Metaphor
“dug in behind enemy lines”
War metaphor seems suitable for a war poem but it is used when the narrator is at home. Reflects the impact that war has had on him.
Compund adjectives and sibilance
“sun-stunned … sand-smothered”
Sun and sand are positive but they turn sinister through the joining with stunned and smothered, aggressive violent words highlighting how there is nothin gpositive left for the narrator as everything he experiences is now tainted.
