Remains Flashcards
The title, Remains
This can be seen through two meanings
Remains- a dead body, the remains of a human
Remains- its also like the memory of the killing ‘remains’ in his head, it never leaves him, the image of the robber ‘sort of inside out’
The shift of power in the poem
The poem starts off with the power being in the soldiers hands - he has the gun and allies, they kill the man with no competition
But then the power shifts to the robber - the robber ‘remains’ in his head, and the ‘drink and the drugs’ wont get rid of him
“His bloody life in my bloody hands”
This shows his full acceptance of the act: before it was ‘all three” who killed him, but it is now in his “bloody hands”
He cant wash the blood off, like he cant wash the memory of the man with ‘drink and the drugs’
This is where he feels guilt and can not pin it on all the others
The shift from ‘I’ and ‘we’
The poem starts off with the repetition of ‘we’, ‘all’, ‘all three’ etc
This shows his willingness to not take full blame - he doesnt want to admit that he killed the man. He feels safer with the other two to blame, the tone is more casual and less dark
But when he uses ‘I’ we can see his guilt, the fact that he can try and accept that he was responsible. This is common near the end, where the tone is more dark and uncomfortable
“I see every round as it rips through his life - I see broad daylight on the other side”
The ‘-‘ emphasis the brutality of the killing and the realisation of his guilt: the use of ‘i’ is increased
‘Rips’ makes the killing seem more brutal and makes him feel more guilty
The use of ‘i’ isolates him from the two other soldiers - the first time he does this. It represents the fact that he does feel guilty
The use of ‘probably armed, possibly not’ twice
The use of this reminds the reader that he does not feel comfortable with the fact that the guy was armed - he is unsure
It also represents a huge problem for soldiers these days. There is no real way of knowing beforehand whether he is armed or not
The fact it is repeated shows that he did not check. Perhaps he was too scared to
