remains

• AO3: poets suggests a persons memory can be corrupted by trauma - also reveals that PTSD can make you feel alone. soldiers are meant to adopt a brave facade but this is impossible due to the horrors of war.
• Structure of the poem

  • Free verse - first seven unrhymed, final stanza consists of two lines
• '"probably armed possibly not”
• Themes in the poem

  • Memory
  • Violence
  • Guilt
  • Effects of war
• who made remains - armitage
• summary of remains - soldier haunted by his involvement in a shooting of a bank looter. raises awareness for PTSD. soldier upset at the man may have been innocent - explores the repercussions of war for soldiers who made it out of war. highlights normalisation of war. war devalues men. war causes nothing but physical and internal suffering. soldiers are seen as commodities who are left stranded with horrors
• “tosses his guts back into his body”
• “his bloody life in my bloody hands“