Power and Conflict Poetry - REMAINS

Question 1

On another occasion

Answer 1

Suggests that these events happen regularly. Soldiers have lost feelings, killing is part of the job.

Question 2

Tosses “Carted off”

Answer 2

Use of the colloquial verbs, sounds almost casual, makes violence seem normal. Suggests that conflict devalues human life.

Question 3

Rips through his life “Sort of inside out”

Answer 3

Makes a graphic, disturbing image, a vivid picture of the horror of war.

Question 4

His bloody life in my bloody hands

Answer 4

Conflict makes people make moral decisions on the spot. Use of “my” shows that the soldier feels responsible.

Question 5

The drinks and drugs won’t flush him out

Answer 5

He can’t rid himself of this horrific image that is stuck with him.

Question 6

Dream, and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds

Answer 6

The flashbacks mean he has trouble sleeping due to nightmares.

Question 7

Probably armed, possibly not

Answer 7

He is still trying to figure out whether his actions were justified.

Question 8

He’s here in my head when I close my eyes

Answer 8

The guilt is seemingly driving the soldier mad.

Question 9

We to “I” and “My bloody hands”

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

Author’s name

Answer 10

Simon Armitage

Question 11

1963

Answer 11

when Simon Armitage was born

Question 12

publishing context

Answer 12

taken from the 2008 collection ‘The Not Dead’, a collection of poems based on and about stories from discharged servicemen.

Question 13

poet laureate

Answer 13

a poet given a special position by the king or queen, who is asked to write poems about important public occasions

Question 14

2019 - Present

Answer 14

when he was appointed the 21st Poet Laurette, a role where he is expected to write verse on occasions of national significance.

Question 15

profession

Answer 15

A Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds

Question 16

the story behind the poem

Answer 16

based on the true story of Guardsman Tromans, a young machine gunner in the Iraq War in 2003.

Question 17

PTSD

Answer 17

post-traumatic stress disorder

Question 18

symptoms of PTSD

Answer 18

Someone with PTSD often relives the traumatic event through nightmares and flashbacks and may experience feelings of isolation, emotional paralysis, irritability and guilt.

Question 19

2003

Answer 19

the start of The invasion of Iraq by the USA and Britain

Question 20

Guardsman Tromans’ inspiration

Answer 20

as a boy, he was impressed at the reception the soldiers got when they returned from the Falklands war

Question 21

the event the poem was based on

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

why the event affected Guardsman Tormans so much

Answer 22

it was his first time killing someone; he didn’t have time to think because it was over so fast

Question 23

The Allied Powers of World War 1

Answer 23

Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States

Question 24

the effects of PTSD on Guardsman Tromans

Answer 24

He said there isn’t a day that goes by that the situation doesn’t run through his head

Question 25

how Guardsman Tromans’ superiors reacted to his mental struggles

Answer 25

they laughed at him

Question 26

propaganda definition

Answer 26

information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view

Question 27

effects of propaganda

Answer 27

changes how the public views issues such as war

Question 28

common characteristics of war propaganda

Answer 28

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’

Question 29

in medias res definition

Answer 29

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

Question 30

function of in medias res

Answer 30

gains the reader’s interest by focusing on the most revealing part of the narrative; here, ‘On another occasion, we get sent out’

Question 31

irony

Answer 31

a contrast between expectation and reality

Question 32

irony in ‘Remains’

Answer 32

The speaker describes incredibly distressing imagery in a flat pragmatic and idiomatic style in contrast to the reader who is likely to be shocked

Question 33

pararhyme

Answer 33

partial rhyme between words with the same pattern of consonants but different vowels - ‘out / not / else / swear / agony / body / lorry’

Question 34

effect of pararhyme in the poem

Answer 34

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

Question 35

pararhyme and the language of common humanity

Answer 35

the imperfection in the rhyme scheme also promotes the language of common humanity, rather than heightened language

Question 36

use of the first person perspective, ‘I’

Answer 36

renders the experience extremely personal and helps generate sympathy for the speaker

Question 37

repetition

Answer 37

the repetition of words, phrases or sentences, often to emphasise ideas or themes

Question 38

effect of repetition in this poem

Answer 38

‘myself and somebody else and somebody else’: the repetition of ‘somebody else’ is here used to deflect the blame from the protagonist alone.

Question 39

symbol definition

Answer 39

characters, settings, images, or other motifs that stand in for bigger ideas

Question 40

major symbols in remains

Answer 40

round’, ‘lorry’

Question 41

symbolic meaning of the major symbols

Answer 41

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

Question 42

Setting

Answer 42

The physical location as well as the time period in which the story takes place

Question 43

setting in Remains

Answer 43

Iraq, 2003

Question 44

symbolic meaning of Armitage’s setting

Answer 44

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

Question 45

enjambment definition

Answer 45

when a sentence or phrase carries over across a line break

Question 46

effects of enjambment in Remains

Answer 46

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

Question 47

open ending

Answer 47

creates a hellish situation because the speaker cannot find closure for his personal nightmare

Question 48

allusion

Answer 48

a reference to earlier pieces of literature or, sometimes, history

Question 49

allusion in Remains

Answer 49

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,’

Question 50

effects of allusion in Remains

Answer 50

emphasises the new inhumane and brutal reality of the 20th and 21st Centuries