Remains

Simon Armitage

Poems based on a true story.

Structure

* Begins mid-action, lack of ease as nothing is neatly organised. We don’t know everything gin the same way that soldier doesn’t when following orders.
* Enjambment during the main event, causes the reader to stop and recognise the moment as the soldier becomes a broken man in the same way act the stanza.
* Caesura of ‘Then I’m home on leave.’ suggests that the speaker feels that maybe the trauma will stop when he gets home.

‘Somebody else’

* Repetition releases the soldier of the full blame of the event
* End of the poem shift to ‘my’ as the speaker takes responsibility for his actions

‘Probably armed, possibly not’

* Repeated to create a cyclical structure suggests that the trauma is inescapable.

Remains

* Soldier has been used in the machine of war, leaving an empty shell
* Something inside of him dies
* The memory of the looter

‘legs it up the road’

* Informal language presents it as an everyday event
* Language is loss as the violent language of ‘rips’ contrasts it, care free and relaxed to traumatised.

‘Sort of inside out’

* War is indescribable through vague language.
* Despite his training, the soldier is not prepared

‘Tosses his guts back into his body’

* Disrespect for the man
* Image of rubbish as a total disregard for human life.

‘Drink and drugs won’t flush him out’

‘Flush’ = trying to cleanse since the soldier is now dirty from war