Summary
AQA Remains Poem Summary
Colour coded summary of Remains with context, analysis and methods annotations.
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methods context message/analysisREMAINS
● The first seven stanzas 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 poem is written as a monologue, from 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 first four stanzas describe the shooting while the second half of the poem
describes the after-effects of this action on the speaker.
On another occasion, we got sent out
● Media res
○ Draws the reader in
● Pronoun ‘we’ adds a sense of unification/togetherness
○ Juxtaposed with his personal experience of PTSD
● He is trying to justify his guilt for killing the man, by telling himself it was a command
● The reader is seeing the individual experience of one soldier but also other soldiers
are going through the same thing
○ Collective suffering makes it more empathetic
to tackle looters raiding a bank.
● ‘Tackle’ tries to soften the harshness of reality
● Clear that he doesn’t want to say shoot or kill
○ he is not taking the blame or responsibility for his actions
● This is a daily occurence suggesting that everyday the soldiers are going through the
same mundane, routinal commands
And one of them legs it up the road,
● Colloquial language used to explain what happened
● ‘One of them’ no name or detail about this person presents the true process of
becoming a soldier
○ Stripped away of identity, judgement,opinion
○ Dehumanized
○ Just machines ordered to kill and shoot
probably armed, possibly not
Well myself and somebody else and somebody else
● 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 other
are all of the same mind,
so all three of us open fire.
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