War Photographer + Remains

• • both poems present the psychological effects of war
  • War Photographer presents how war affects the photographer, but she presents this through the perspective of the outsider who can escape the war
  • Remains presents a shocking view of war to make a political statement on how war effects soldiers
• Remains:

  • colloquial language - bond between reader and speaker - conversational
  • links to shocking nature, speaker finds it hard to speak about experiences
  • 'there on the ground sort of inside out' - gruesome, dehumanising looter and makes them seem unrecognisable
  • either speaker is unable to articulate what happened because of the uncertainty ('sort of') or speaker is used to violence due to colloquial language
  • both interpretations work - Armitage focuses on PTSD of soldier from Iraq war
• • trauma of the soldier is then shown
  • caesura used after 'blink', 'sleep', 'wink' for seperation and to emphasise them
  • caesura creates shock due to the pause, which reflects disrupted mind
  • cannot find peace even whilst sleep, shows trauma and shock
  • allusion "his bloody life in my bloody hands" - alludes to Macbeth, guilt as he killed a "possibly" armed man - war crime
  • repition of "possibly armed, probably not" - guilt, constant distress
• • War Photographer shows effects by displaying PTSD of photographer
  • "tremble" in his hands - trauma, reliving
  • "half formed ghost" - haunted by memories
• • War Photographer focuses isolation of not just him, but those effected by conflict
  • struggles to be at home "home again to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel"
  • paradoxical language - belittles pain of those who live in a "safe" country, where "fields don't explode beneath the feet"
  • feels isolated from those around him due to trauma, as they cannot comprehend what he has seen in places like 'Belfast' and 'Beirut'
• • sarcastic tone in last stanza of War Photographer

  "the reader's eyeballs prick with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers"

  • enjambment after 'prick' to show how small a prick is - displays lack of understanding, as they quickly return to luxuries
  • bitter tone shows how he cannot relate to home, as he is changed - "stares impassively"
  • ends with "they do not care"