remains

• Armitage employs the dramatic monologue form in his collection 'The Not Dead', adopting the voice of Guardsman Tromans, who served in Iraq, in order to expose the reality of war and provide a psychological insight that unveils the mental agony soldiers are left to deal with.
• "probably armed, possibly not"


  refrain - soldier is incessantly haunted by his omnipresent trauma and guilt
• "I see every round as it rips through his life - "


  disphemistic imagery - bluntly exposes the horrifically violent reality of war
• "his blood-shadow stays out on the street" 


  metaphor - the soldiers' PTSD is now an unescapable and intrinsic part of him that will follow him forever, like a shadow
• "here and now / his bloody life in my bloody hands"


  • excessive enjambment mirrors the chaos of war zone and his internal trauma as he has no control over his memories
  • motif of "blood" as a symbol of the omnipresent guilt that haunts the soldier
• "the drink and the drugs won't flush him out - "


  metaphor - resorts to desperate measures to nullify his trauma

  "-" creates fragmented syntax that elucidates his fractious state of mind
• Armitage exposes the true horrors of war, subverting an archetypal glorification of soldiers as valiant in battle, in order to condemn conflict.