Remains

• Use of Repetition:

  • Repetition in early parts of the poem;
  • "Well myself and somebody else and somebody else"
  • He wants to deflect the blame of the kill onto other soldiers
  • Sentence is dominated by the other soldiers
  • Doesn't want to take the full blame
  • (Same stanza) "So all three of us open fire. Three of a kind all letting fly"
  • Repetition of 'three' again shows the narrator doesn't want to be wholly to blame
  • This attitude changes since at the end of the poem he says;
  • " His bloody life in my bloody hands"
  • Narrator is finally taking responsibility
• Structure:

  • The poem begins mid action; "On another occasion we get sent out."
  • Reader is immediately on the back foot, suggests something had happened before - shows soldiers were never at rest
• Structure:

  • Use of enjambment
  • "Three of a kind all letting fly, and(line break) I swear I see every round as it rips through his life
  • Whole stanza break which forces reader to stop
  • Mirrors the moment that the soldier would've seen the bullets hit
• Structure:

  • Sentence lengths / Caesura
  • "Then I'm home on leave." Shows that people will think the soldier's life will improve but it doesn't
  • Cyclical structure / Repetition
  • "Probably armed, possibly not."
  • Suggests the trauma the soldier has experienced is inescapable
• Language:

  • The title: "Remains"
  • Matches the definition; the soldier has been used in the machine of war
  • Connotations to a person's body after death, metaphorically the soldier dies
  • 'The blood shadow on the street' remains that he shot
• Language:

  • Colloquial language
  • 'Legs it up the road'
  • Shows that this was an everyday occurrence for the soldier, like he's speaking about it to a mate
  • Change to violent language
  • Juxtaposes two types of language
  • Shows the affects on the soldier
• Language:

  • 'Sort of inside out'
  • Doesn't have the vocabulary to describe what he saw
  • Then he's carted off in the back of the lorry
  • Shows the treatment of the looter, as if he's a pile of rubbish
• Language:

  • 'Drink and drugs won't flush him out'
  • 'Flush' is linked to sickness being cleansed
• Language:

  • 'Dug in behind enemy lines'
  • War imagery shows that he is still impacted by war since he is at home but is still thinking about things in terms of war
• Language:

  • 'Sun-stunned, sand-smothered'
  • Positive words turned negative by 'stunned' and 'smothered' shows the soldier has nothing positive left
• Language:

  • 'Bloody hands' shows that the memory of the murdered is stayed within
  • Linked to Macbeth, water cannot clear them from their deeds
• Context:

  • Based on Tromans mission to stop people robbing a bank
  • It was the first time he shot and killed somebody
  • He saw the man screaming and the sight gave him PTSD, which ultimately meant he was discharged from the Army
• Simon Armitage:

  • Born in 1963 in Huddersfield
  • Oxford Professor of Poetry
  • Poetry is accessible and contemporary, but full of rich language and structural choices
  • Taken from the collection 'the not dead'
  • Based on the true story of Guardsman Tromans, a machine gunner in the Iraq war in 2003