Power and Conflict Poetry - REMAINS Flashcards
On another occasion
Suggests that these events happen regularly. Soldiers have lost feelings, killing is part of the job.
Tosses “Carted off”
Use of the colloquial verbs, sounds almost casual, makes violence seem normal. Suggests that conflict devalues human life.
Rips through his life “Sort of inside out”
Makes a graphic, disturbing image, a vivid picture of the horror of war.
His bloody life in my bloody hands
Conflict makes people make moral decisions on the spot. Use of “my” shows that the soldier feels responsible.
The drinks and drugs won’t flush him out
He can’t rid himself of this horrific image that is stuck with him.
Dream, and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds
The flashbacks mean he has trouble sleeping due to nightmares.
Probably armed, possibly not
He is still trying to figure out whether his actions were justified.
He’s here in my head when I close my eyes
The guilt is seemingly driving the soldier mad.
We to “I” and “My bloody hands”
The soldier feels that the death of this man was purely his fault even though there were two other soldiers who did the exact same thing.
Author’s name
Simon Armitage
1963
when Simon Armitage was born
publishing context
taken from the 2008 collection ‘The Not Dead’, a collection of poems based on and about stories from discharged servicemen.
poet laureate
a poet given a special position by the king or queen, who is asked to write poems about important public occasions
2019 - Present
when he was appointed the 21st Poet Laurette, a role where he is expected to write verse on occasions of national significance.
profession
A Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds
the story behind the poem
based on the true story of Guardsman Tromans, a young machine gunner in the Iraq War in 2003.
PTSD
post-traumatic stress disorder
symptoms of PTSD
Someone with PTSD often relives the traumatic event through nightmares and flashbacks and may experience feelings of isolation, emotional paralysis, irritability and guilt.
2003
the start of The invasion of Iraq by the USA and Britain
Guardsman Tromans’ inspiration
as a boy, he was impressed at the reception the soldiers got when they returned from the Falklands war
the event the poem was based on
The soldiers were sent to tackle looters and raiders at a bank. He remembers a man lying on the ground screaming in pain with his intestines hanging out.
why the event affected Guardsman Tormans so much
it was his first time killing someone; he didn’t have time to think because it was over so fast
The Allied Powers of World War 1
Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States
the effects of PTSD on Guardsman Tromans
He said there isn’t a day that goes by that the situation doesn’t run through his head
how Guardsman Tromans’ superiors reacted to his mental struggles
they laughed at him
propaganda definition
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view
effects of propaganda
changes how the public views issues such as war
common characteristics of war propaganda
jingoistic, inflamed national hatreds, presented the soldiers’ mission as a necessary patriotic sacrifice for God, King and country; in some cases, welcomed war as a necessary blood-letting that would ‘stiffen’ the nation’s weakened character; recruitment advertisement of 1914 also promised that ‘the war would be over by Christmas’
in medias res definition
a Latin phrase meaning ‘into the middle of things’, applied to the common technique of storytelling by which the narrator begins the story at some exciting point in the middle of the action
function of in medias res
gains the reader’s interest by focusing on the most revealing part of the narrative; here, ‘On another occasion, we get sent out’
irony
a contrast between expectation and reality
irony in ‘Remains’
The speaker describes incredibly distressing imagery in a flat pragmatic and idiomatic style in contrast to the reader who is likely to be shocked
pararhyme
partial rhyme between words with the same pattern of consonants but different vowels - ‘out / not / else / swear / agony / body / lorry’
effect of pararhyme in the poem
The constant use of this device creates a permanent nervous edginess: it seeks closure, control or balance but is unable to achieve it, possibly a reflection of the haunting situation the soldier finds himself in
pararhyme and the language of common humanity
the imperfection in the rhyme scheme also promotes the language of common humanity, rather than heightened language
use of the first person perspective, ‘I’
renders the experience extremely personal and helps generate sympathy for the speaker
repetition
the repetition of words, phrases or sentences, often to emphasise ideas or themes
effect of repetition in this poem
‘myself and somebody else and somebody else’: the repetition of ‘somebody else’ is here used to deflect the blame from the protagonist alone.
symbol definition
characters, settings, images, or other motifs that stand in for bigger ideas
major symbols in remains
round’, ‘lorry’
symbolic meaning of the major symbols
the word ‘round’ is euphemistic; he’s referring to a bullet, a weapon that creates death - the ‘lorry’ is the tool that the soldiers use to ‘cart away’ and discard the body; both tools represent indifference to human life
Setting
The physical location as well as the time period in which the story takes place
setting in Remains
Iraq, 2003
symbolic meaning of Armitage’s setting
a place of injustice in the sense that the war was not justified and, by extension, neither were the individual actions that took place there
enjambment definition
when a sentence or phrase carries over across a line break
effects of enjambment in Remains
compels us forward, seeking closure for the haunting memories, but the irony is that the further we read into the poem, the more haunting it becomes
open ending
creates a hellish situation because the speaker cannot find closure for his personal nightmare
allusion
a reference to earlier pieces of literature or, sometimes, history
allusion in Remains
One of my mates goes by / and tosses his guts back into his body’ - a possible allusion or echoing of Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est: ‘If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood / Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,’
effects of allusion in Remains
emphasises the new inhumane and brutal reality of the 20th and 21st Centuries
