Remains

Mental suffering - Highlights the effects of PTSD, something that is becoming increasingly focused on in modern healthcare to be equally as important as physical injuries. Explores the pschological torment experienced by soliders as they struggle to come to terms with some part of their duty- normally a horrific memory of killing or being in danger

Afghanistan and Iraq wars - Lots of civillian deaths due to the war being about taking control of the country to depose of terrorists/dictators

Simon Armitage - Known for his colloquial style shown in Remains. Trying to create a believable human to make the message of the poem more shocking and emotional for the reader

Guilt: the speaker in this poem is haunted by the guilt of taking another man’s life. He is traumatised by the fact that the man might have been innocent. 'Probably armed, possibly not' This phrase is repeated in the poem, emphasising the speaker’s sense of discomfort at having killed another human being who may have been innocent.

Conflict: the speaker is acting under orders and is engaged in combat in another country. 'Not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land' The physical description of the place is dry and dusty, reminding the reader of images of newsreel scenes of wars. The men were ‘sent out’, showing that they were soldiers acting under orders.

Life and death: the looter is killed by rounds of bullets that the group of soldiers send into him. 'I see every round as it rips through his life/ I see broad daylight on the other side' Life for the looter is instantly and brutally ended. The way the speaker sees ‘broad daylight on the other side’ suggests the speed with which everything happens. One minute there is a man who is alive and the next, nothing.

Remains is formed of eight stanzas and the first seven are in largely unrhymed quatrains -The final stanza consists of only two lines and therefore stands out, emphasising the fact the speaker cannot rid himself of the memory of the killing. It could also imply disintegration in the speaker’s state of mind.

The title - The title may refer to the remains of the dead man, the remains of the memory that haunts the speaker and to what remains are left of his own life now that he is riddled with guilt.

Written as a monologuefrom the point of view of the speaker -  The poem has the feel of fast-paced natural speech. There is no regular rhythmic pattern and there are examples of enjambment, sometimes between stanzas, which adds to the sense of someone telling their story fairly naturally.

The language of the poem is anecdotal - along with the pace and rhythm, gives the sense the speaker is directly telling us his story. Slang such as ‘mates’ and colliquial language such as ‘legs it’ is used throughout. The speaker shifts from past tense in the first two lines, to present tense for the rest of the poem which adds immediacy to the narrative.

The imagery is graphic and brutal in its depiction of the killing - The bullets ‘rip’ the man’s body and after they have killed him and he is ‘sort of inside out’. The poet does not spare the reader the details of the shooting, especially when he writes about how the speaker’s mate ‘tosses his guts back into his body’. This conveys the disturbance and trauma that the soldier carries with him long after he has returned home.

The language alludes to Shakespeare’s play 'Macbeth' with its references to sleep and bloody hands - When Macbeth murders his king (the innocent Duncan), he says ‘Macbeth doth murder sleep’ (II.2) and similarly the speaker here refers to his disturbed sleep after killing the looter. The poem ends with the image of his ‘bloody hands’, which reminds us of Lady Macbeth’s struggles to remove the spot of blood that represents her guilt.

'Blood-shadow'- 'Shadow' something that never leaves you - represents the never'ending torment in the soldiers brain. It also only comes out during the day, traditionally worst thoughts come at night however his PTSD overpowers all human nature. Furthermore, shadows are usually larger than the person, showing how the soldier's mental demons are overpowering him.

Interpretation of the lines: ‘Well myself and somebody else and somebody else/ are all of the same mind,’  

The soldiers are nameless and in many ways identical. The use of ‘somebody else’ suggests that these could be any men, as if the soldiers are as disposable as the looter they have killed. The lack of names makes them anonymous and perhaps suggests that this is the way they are regarded by others.

The soldiers work under orders and do as they are told, as if they have been programmed to behave in this way. The phrase ‘are all of the same mind’ shows that they respond to the looter in the same way. This suggests that they have been trained, and their act of opening fire is one that is programmed into them. They do not behave as individuals.

Interpretation of the lines: ‘One of my mates goes by/ and tosses his guts back into his body’

The soldiers are bonded through their experiences. The colloquial term ‘mate’ suggests friendship and a mutual understanding between the soldiers of the brutal reality they've faced together out at war.

The soldiers have a disregard for human life. The word ‘tosses’ implies a carelessness, as if the looter’s life is worthless.