Line by Line Mr Salles Analysis of Remains Flashcards
Context - the not dead
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.
“On another occasion”
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
“legs it”
Casual - not someone who’s fighting/dangerous,
- instead like a child, running away
- Speaker doesn’t care if the looter is dangerous
“myself and somebody else and somebody else”
Language of distance - makes him seem less responsible.
Knows he’s guilty.
Refuses to name - suggests guilt
“Three of a kind all letting fly”
- Mates/pals
- Like in a cartoon/video game
- Doesn’t feel real
- Trying to distance himself by making the murder seem like a game
“it rips through his life”
Tone changed -
Onomatopaeic verb ‘rips’ - violence
- ‘Through his life” - implies he may have had children - massive impact. Touched everything in his life
“sort of inside out”
- Indescribably horrible
- Yet he’s not under threat (legs it) - why’s he killed him?
- Gone too far abusing his power
“my mates”
- Admitting they were in it together
“tosses his guts back into his body”
- 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
“End of story”
- 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
“He’s torn apart by a dozen rounds”
- 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
“Dug in behind enemy lines”
Language of warfare
Own mind at war
“Some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land”
- 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?
“or six-feet-under in desert sand”
Connotes death
Compare to Ozymandias - landscape environment.
- Ending of sand
“his bloody life in my bloody hands”
- Colloquial langauge - frustration as he wants to be rid of the memory
- Allusion to Macbeth
“Three of a kind” - allusion
reference to Musketeers who were a band who fought for justice
- Ironically
- These people are committing murder
“On the other side”
- Alludes to death, heaven
- Ironic - soldier doesn’t feel that
“Sleep” “Dream”
- 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
“He’s carted off in the back of a lorry” - allusion
- Dulce a decorum est - OWEN
- Protested against war and people in England who pretended war was glorious.
- Armitage is questioning the purpose of war.
“desert sand”
- 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
“bloody life in my bloody hands” - allusion.
- 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
“Pain itself, the image of agony” - imagery
- No sounds/smells
- Effect of drugs/drink?
- Left with visual image > degeneration of soldier’s mind > not in touch with senses > closer to suicide?
“I see”
- only sense left that can’t go
“Blood shadow”
- Shadows follow the soldier
- Can’t escape his acts
“On another occasion” - structure
- In middle of conversation - shows how killing is commonplace to the soldier
Repetition of probably armed, possibly not
- 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?
“and I swear”
- Abuse - swearing - happened in poem
- Promise to tell truth
- Confession to guilt
“agony” “goes by” “body” “lorry”
- Half rhymes
- Unsettled feeling of speaker’s mind as a result of his actions
- His mind isn’t complete, it’s fractured
“sands” “hands”
- 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
