Summary
Highlights
The poem recounts an incident where soldiers are deployed to tackle looters robbing a bank. They shoot a man, believing he is armed, and the narrator vividly describes the violent scene. Despite the man being carted away, his 'blood shadow' remains on the street, and the memory haunts the soldier even after returning home on leave. The trauma leads to nightmares and substance abuse, highlighting the inescapable nature of his experience.
The video introduces Simon Armitage, an accomplished poet and Oxford professor, whose work is a staple on literature exams. 'Remains' is part of the collection 'The Not Dead' (2008), which originated as a Channel 4 documentary. The poem is based on the true story of Guardsman Tromans, a machine gunner in the 2003 Iraq war, and explores the long-term psychological effects of conflict on soldiers.
'Remains' addresses the after-effects of conflict, similar to 'War Photographer,' 'Bayonet Charge,' and 'Exposure.' Structurally, the poem begins 'in media res' with 'On another occasion, we get sent out,' immersing the reader directly into the chaotic and unsettling reality of war, mirroring the soldiers' own lack of control and full understanding.
The poem uses repetition to explore the soldier's initial attempt to deflect blame. Phrases like 'myself and somebody else and somebody else' and 'all three of us open fire, three of a kind' emphasize shared responsibility. However, a significant shift occurs at the end with 'His bloody life in my bloody hands,' indicating the narrator eventually bears the burden of guilt alone, a structural pivot reflecting his solitary suffering back home.
Enjambment is employed to highlight the life-altering moment of the shooting, particularly the stanza break after 'rips through his life,' forcing the reader to pause and grasp the profound impact of the event on the soldier. Short sentences, like 'Then I'm home on leave,' create a sense of abruptness, suggesting a false hope of relief from trauma that is quickly dashed.
The repetition of 'probably armed, possibly not' from early in the poem creates a cyclical structure, emphasizing the inescapable nature of the soldier's trauma. This circularity suggests that the soldier is perpetually caught in the loop of his memories and guilt, unable to move past the event.
The title 'Remains' is explored for its multiple meanings: the left-over parts of something (the broken soldier), the body after death (literal remains of the looter and metaphorical death of part of the soldier), and the persistent memory of the event ('here in my head').
Armitage uses everyday language and colloquialisms like 'legs it up the road' to initially present the war as a mundane, 'another occasion' event for the soldiers. This casual tone is then sharply juxtaposed with horrific imagery, such as 'every round as it rips through his life,' highlighting the sudden and brutal shift from normalcy to extreme violence and its aftermath.
Vague language like 'sort of inside out' reflects the soldier's inability to comprehend or articulate the horror he witnessed. The description of the wounded man's treatment, 'tosses his guts back into his body' and 'carted off in the back of a lorry,' uses imagery associated with rubbish collection, dehumanizing the victim and illustrating the casual disrespect for human life amidst conflict. The phrase 'drink and drugs won't flush him out' implies the soldier feels unclean and tries to purge the memory like a sickness.
The use of war metaphors like 'dug in behind enemy lines' while the soldier is home on leave demonstrates how war has permeated his psyche, making it impossible to switch off. The sibilance in 'sun-stunned, sand-smothered land' draws attention to composite adjectives that combine positive natural elements with aggressive, violent terms, reflecting how the soldier's perception of everything is now tainted by the experience of war.
The poem's ending, 'His bloody life in my bloody hands,' makes an intertextual reference to Shakespeare's Macbeth. Like Lady Macbeth's inability to wash away the blood of her deed, the soldier finds that the consequences of his actions and the horrific memories are indelible, causing lasting mental damage.