Remains analysis

Question 1

“Not left for the dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land”

Answer 1

• War imagery: inescapable impact of war on him even at home
• Positive imagery of ‘sun’ and ‘sand’ turns sinister by the adjoining adjectives ‘stunned’ and ‘smothered’ suggesting everything he experiences is now tainted with the evil of war
• Sibilance gives the impression of a sinister dreaming / nightmare state

Question 2

“I swear I see every round as it rips through his life”

Answer 2

• Volta: transition from the ordinary to gruesome mimics the way the situation suddenly escalated
• Monosyllabic sounds of alliterative r’s echoes the ripping apart of the soldiers and looters lives
• Single plosive consonant imitates the single gunshot which highlights the brutality of war
• Contrast between colloquialism and horrific visual imagery highlights the normality of the situation, although it shouldn’t be

Question 3

“His bloody life in my bloody hands”

Answer 3

• Repetition of ‘bloody’ creates a literary allusion to lady Macbeth’s guilt into killing the kind, the looters life was as precious as the kings highlighting the tragic consequence
• Syntactic parallel and shift of pronoun shows how he shifts the blame onto himself creating a sympathetic tone