Remains by Simon Armitage - AQAThemes

Remains is focused on a soldier haunted by a violent memory. Content, ideas, language and structure are explored. Comparisons and alternative interpretations are also considered.

Part ofEnglish LiteraturePoems

Themes

A British soldier on patrol in Iraq — Figure caption,
The speaker of 'Remains' is a soldier haunted by guilt

A number of unifying ideas or run through the poem. Different readers may attach more or less significance to each of these themes, depending upon how they view the poem.

Theme	Evidence	Analysis
Guilt: the speaker in this poem is haunted by the guilt of taking another man’s life. He is upset 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.	‘dug in behind enemy lines,/ 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.

Theme	Guilt: the speaker in this poem is haunted by the guilt of taking another man’s life. He is upset by the fact that the man might have been innocent.
Evidence	‘probably armed, possibly not’
Analysis	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.

Theme	Conflict: the speaker is acting under orders and is engaged in combat in another country.
Evidence	‘dug in behind enemy lines,/ not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land’
Analysis	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.

Theme	Life and death: the looter is killed by rounds of bullets that the group of soldiers send into him.
Evidence	‘I see every round as it rips through his life/ I see broad daylight on the other side’
Analysis	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.

Question

How does Simon Armitage present conflict in this poem?

Interpretations

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