Power and Conflict: Remains

• "On another occasion we get sent out"

  • his duty feels like a punishment
  • worst psychological effect on him
  • being with in media res
  • an incident that has affected the solider
  • this is an occasion he doesn't want to face
  • passive language
  • common idea: dismissal
  • a frequent occurrence
• "I see every round as it rips through his life"

  • "I swear" is followed after this quote - violently curses to himself after witnessing this
  • represents a turning point (volta)
  • a break to the new stanza
  • metaphor: memory is always in the present
  • harsh alliteration
  • cyclical memory
  • blaming himself from the change of pronouns
• "One of my mates go by and tosses his guts back into his body"

  • colloquial/casual language
  • no respect for the dead man
  • sibilance emphasises the sinister casual actions - horrifying the reader
  • metaphor
  • doesn't want this memory to end
  • the reader/soldier may also feel sick looking back on this memory
  • violent imagery juxtaposes with the casual imagery
  • makes it sound like the body is rubbish
• "and the drink and the drugs wont flush him out -"

  • powerful sense of repetition meaning the narrator has an ongoing addiction to alcohol and consuming drugs
  • built an addiction battling with war
  • these experiences REMAIN with the soldier
  • this one soldier represents all the soldiers as a whole
  • judging himself by being self-disgusted
  • war terminology "flush"
  • flush out
  • allusion to excrement: memories wanting to disappear
  • metaphor of being flushed out
• "but near to the knuckle here and now his bloody life in my bloody hands"

  • literary allusion to Lady Macbeth
  • poem is a turning point (volta) to save him or kill him
  • a change in pronoun - feeling responsibility
  • a motive for suicide
  • life was just as important as being a King - royalty
  • he feels the guilt
  • the previous stanza could've rhymed with an extra letter symbolising lack of control
  • discordance
• • the poem could've determined the soldier's happiness by ending with a rhyming couplet however Armitage deliberately didn't include this and included the rhyming couplet in the previous stanza - showing a lack of control over the narrators emotions