Line by Line Mr Salles Analysis of Remains

Question 1

Context - the not dead

Answer 1

A short collection of war poems written as a response to the testimonies of ex-soldiers.

Remains was written for someone who served in Basra, tries to capture the moment when he shot a man looting a bank.

Question 2

“On another occasion”

Answer 2

Casual nature - surprise.

Suggests the soldier has told the interviewer lots of occasions where he has shot someone. The killing has become normal.

This is no longer normal though

Question 3

“legs it”

Answer 3

Casual - not someone who’s fighting/dangerous,

• instead like a child, running away
• Speaker doesn’t care if the looter is dangerous

Question 4

“myself and somebody else and somebody else”

Answer 4

Language of distance - makes him seem less responsible.

Knows he’s guilty.

Refuses to name - suggests guilt

Question 5

“Three of a kind all letting fly”

Answer 5

• Mates/pals
• Like in a cartoon/video game
• Doesn’t feel real
• Trying to distance himself by making the murder seem like a game

Question 6

“it rips through his life”

Answer 6

Tone changed -
Onomatopaeic verb ‘rips’ - violence
- ‘Through his life” - implies he may have had children - massive impact. Touched everything in his life

Question 7

“sort of inside out”

Answer 7

• Indescribably horrible
• Yet he’s not under threat (legs it) - why’s he killed him?
• Gone too far abusing his power

Question 8

“my mates”

Answer 8

• Admitting they were in it together

Question 9

“tosses his guts back into his body”

Answer 9

• Speaker’s callous tone
• But he also realises how horrible it is - starting to see things differently.
• Spokesperson for soldiers who may find their actions unjustifiable and therefore the suffer guilt - common problem

Question 10

“End of story”

Answer 10

• Event finished
• Wants it to be over
• Feels guilt
• Stories and ends have morals - the ending of the man’s life has taught the soldier a lesson
• Armitage is showing how war destroys soldiers of all sorts morally

Question 11

“He’s torn apart by a dozen rounds”

Answer 11

• Violent verb to show how horrifying the act is now in the soldier’s memory
• A dozen - casual number.
• reminder of war film - the dirty dozen - all soldiers are recruited from a criminal facility scene - evil men taken on a mission.
• Implication that that is what is makes the best soldiers - immoral people.
• Shows guilt
• Flush - toilet - internal imagery, thinking of excretement - disgust of his actions

Question 12

“Dug in behind enemy lines”

Answer 12

Language of warfare
Own mind at war

Question 13

“Some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land”

Answer 13

• Poetic description of Iraq
• Sibilance
• Sounds like a beautiful place
• Describes a land that’s been murdered (stunned, then smothered)
• War doesn’t just damage those we send to fight, it also damages the country - Iraq been smothered by USA and UK. Have we liberated Iraq or made it worse?

Question 14

“or six-feet-under in desert sand”

Answer 14

Connotes death
Compare to Ozymandias - landscape environment.
- Ending of sand

Question 15

“his bloody life in my bloody hands”

Answer 15

• Colloquial langauge - frustration as he wants to be rid of the memory
• Allusion to Macbeth

Question 16

“Three of a kind” - allusion

Answer 16

reference to Musketeers who were a band who fought for justice
- Ironically
- These people are committing murder

Question 17

“On the other side”

Answer 17

• Alludes to death, heaven
• Ironic - soldier doesn’t feel that

Question 18

“Sleep” “Dream”

Answer 18

• Shakespearean References
• Macbeth cannot sleep/dream
• Lady Macbeth sleepwalks
• Because of guilt
• Hamlet talks about death as the chance to sleep/dream > better dreams than life > the persona is now suicidal > won’t have nightmares

Question 19

“He’s carted off in the back of a lorry” - allusion

Answer 19

• Dulce a decorum est - OWEN
• Protested against war and people in England who pretended war was glorious.
• Armitage is questioning the purpose of war.

Question 20

“desert sand”

Answer 20

• Ozymandias
• Structural Allusion - now there’s a couplet
• used to end a poem - where the protagonist would like the poem to end > ironic
• NOT the end

Question 21

“bloody life in my bloody hands” - allusion.

Answer 21

• Allusion to Macbeth (I am blood stepped in so far) - guilt
• Blood on his hands (A little water clears us of this deed)
• By us going to war, we are destroying ourselves - we’re weakening our own civilisation by committing barbaric acts and pretending these acts are helping the country invaded

Question 22

“Pain itself, the image of agony” - imagery

Answer 22

• No sounds/smells
• Effect of drugs/drink?
• Left with visual image > degeneration of soldier’s mind > not in touch with senses > closer to suicide?

Question 23

“I see”

Answer 23

• only sense left that can’t go

Question 24

“Blood shadow”

Answer 24

• Shadows follow the soldier
• Can’t escape his acts

Question 25

“On another occasion” - structure

Answer 25

• In middle of conversation - shows how killing is commonplace to the soldier

Question 26

Repetition of probably armed, possibly not

Answer 26

• Mirror each other
• Theme throughout poem
• Suggests the soldier wants to believe he was armed, but might not be
• Saw his mate who “tosses his guts into the back of the lorry” - no armour?

Question 27

“and I swear”

Answer 27

• Abuse - swearing - happened in poem
• Promise to tell truth
• Confession to guilt

Question 28

“agony” “goes by” “body” “lorry”

Answer 28

• Half rhymes
• Unsettled feeling of speaker’s mind as a result of his actions
• His mind isn’t complete, it’s fractured

Question 29

“sands” “hands”

Answer 29

• Poem reaches a sense of completeness
• Protagonist understands his own guilt
• Irony > Armitage doesn’t think the soldier is fully responsible. He thinks war ruins good men. Are we justified in sending soldiers to war in a country that doesn’t threaten us completely?
• He’s a good man because of his feelings of guilt - like Macbeth?
• Macbeth and the soldier turns to evil in the aftermath of war