Remains by Simon Armitage: what it is about, its context, and how Armitage uses language, form and structure.
Key quotations and how to analyse them, and the poems in the cluster it compares well with, with similarities and differences.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'On another occasion, we get sent out', 'probably armed, possibly not', 'I see every round as it rips through his life', 'tosses his guts back into his body', 'End of story, except not really', 'his bloody life in my bloody hands', 'he's here in my head when I close my eyes', 'dug in behind enemy lines'.
Form: a dramatic monologue in a soldier's spoken voice, and the turn from the event to its memory.
Context: Armitage's interviews with soldiers for The Not Dead (2008), and post-traumatic stress.
Comparisons with Poppies, War Photographer and Kamikaze.
