Remains Flashcards
‘On another occasion’
The poem opens In media res, which confuses the reader initially as they don’t know what’s going on, and reflects the chaos of war and how unpredictable it is. This mirrors the confusion of the soldier, as they’re not prepared emotionally for what’s going to happen next. This could be Armitage making a societal comment that soldiers are launched into situations they don’t fully understand, and that the military lacks compassion for the individuals that are risking their lives by carrying out their orders.
‘Get sent out’
The speaker is saying that this is one occasion of many, not an exceptional case but one the soldiers deal with on a day-to-day basis. They’re expected to deal with repeated exposure to suffering and horror without any help.
‘Probably armed, possibly not.’
It suggests there is a chance that he could’ve been innocent. ‘Probably’ comes first because he wants to believe that it was justified. The phrase is repeated later in the poem, showing how he is focused on the possibility of the killing being unjustified, and how he feels guilt about killing the man.
‘Sort of inside out, // pain itself, the image of agony.’
Gruesome imagery. It also shows the transition from colloquial to emotional. His colloquial language comes from trying to pretend he was not impacted, and the writing of the poem is a process of him going over his memories and letting his actual emotions come out whilst on leave and escaped from the conflict zone.
‘Tosses his guts back into his body. // Then he’s carted off in the back of a lorry.’
‘Tosses’ connotes a lack of care or respect, not respecting the body and treating it like an object. It also suggests that this is something that they’re used to, as they don’t think anything of it. To them, the body has no value as they’ve become desensitised to the value of human life. Also, the rhyme between ‘body’ and ‘lorry’ adds fluidity, which suggests this is a routine thing for them.
‘Blood-shadow’
Death stains a person’s conscience like it did to the street. He’s haunted by the memory and has no way to escape it.
‘Then I’m home on leave. But I blink’
Caesura provides a finality - it should be final. Going home should be the end of his memory of the event and the extent of its impact on him. The warzone shouldn’t be impacting him once he leaves, but it is.
‘He’s here in my head when I close my eyes’
The warzone is no longer real but in his head. He has an internal conflict due to guilt, the battle between whether it was justified or not. The looter is stuck in his mind and continues to haunt him, which is his PTSD.
‘But near to the knuckle, here and now’
An idiom meaning risky or verging on offensive - likely to cause offense. The memory feels offensive to him and is still causing him pain. It should be in the past but is in the ‘here and now’ due to his PTSD which causes him to relive the past in the form of flashbacks.
‘His bloody life in my bloody hands’
A pun, bloody could be the adjective of something gruesome and covered in blood, or being used as slang. ‘Bloody hands’ suggests that it has almost cursed him and has ruined his life, and has some religious connotations.
What is the perspective and how does it effect the poem?
It’s a dramatic monologue in the present tense. This gives it a sense of being an account from memory in a flashback. Flashbacks are a symptom of PTSD, and perhaps the speaker could be recounting his experiences in a therapy-like setting.
How does the structure affect the poem?
At the start of the poem, the speaker tries to excuse what he did and share the blame (‘myself and somebody else and somebody else’ and ‘all three of us’) making it clear that it wasn’t only his decision. This can be interpreted as the speaker trying to ignore his guilt, and his colloquial language shows that he is trying to remain casual and not reveal how much impact it has had. However, by the end the feeling of blame has shifted to not only onto him but the speaker believes it is solely his responsibility. This emphasises his guilt and demonstrates how PTSD can warp how a person views past events.
How does the contrast between colloquial language and gruesome/violent imagery affect the poem?
‘So’, ‘I swear’, ‘legs it’ and ‘mates’ which are used when referring to the dead bodies suggest that the soldiers have become deadened and desensitised to the harsh realities of war, which allows them to talk about death and suffering in colloquial terms.
Which poems can it be compared to?
- Poppies - both poems show how the effects of war are damaging and painful, and the psychological consequences of conflict are due to guilt. Memory also extends the impact of the conflict in both.
- Charge of the Light Brigade - both poets present the expectation that soldiers will not question orders, and will serve the military with blind obedience. They’re shown to be desensitised to war and treated like tools rather than individuals with real thoughts and feelings. Both poems demonstrate the reality of war vs. the presented propaganda perspective of the glory of war. However, Remains presents the impact of the war on the individual while COTLB glorifies the collective impact of soldiers on a nation; collectively they bring glory but at the expense of the individual.
- Bayonet Charge - both poems present a psychological impact of war. The speaker in BC starts questioning his role in war (‘the finger pointing that second’) to realise the futility and lack of honour. The theme of psychological impact is also explored in Remains but in the form of PTSD. Both poets also present the soldiers as scared (in Remains, the speaker is scared of the past and keeps remembering it, whereas in BC the soldier is scared of the future and how he could get killed). However, in Remains, the speaker tends to focus on the short term, suggested by the opening being in media res, whereas in BC it’s suggested that the speaker tends to focus on the long term, through the use of the flashback.
