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“Remains” Introduction
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"Remains" was published by the British poet Simon Armitage in 2008 as part of his collection The Not Dead, a series of war poems based on the testimonies of ex-soldiers. Instead of detailing conflict, however, these poems confront the aftermath of war and the traumatic memories that ex-service people might struggle to cope with. "Remains" specifically focuses on a soldier who was involved with killing a man caught looting a bank during conflict in what is implied to be the Middle East. The poem is characteristic of Armitage’s conversational style, using colloquialisms and everyday speech patterns alongside vivid imagery to offer a realistic portrait of a person haunted by grief, guilt, and trauma.
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“Remains” Summary
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The speaker, along with some other soldiers, has been given an order to go out and investigate a group of thieves stealing from a bank. One of the thieves breaks off from the rest of the group and tries to run away. This person might be carrying a weapon, but also might not be.
The speaker and two other unnamed soldiers make a quick decision, and all three of them begin shooting at the looter. The three of them fire their guns with abandon, and the speaker is convinced that they can see each individual bullet pass through the man's body, that they can see daylight shining through the bullet holes left behind.
After the soldiers have shot the man a dozen times, he's lying on the ground with parts of his internal organs spilling out. He's clearly in extreme pain; in fact, his body is the image of pain. One of the speaker's fellow soldiers walks up to the man, picks up his exposed intestines, and throws them back into the cavity of the man's stomach. The man is then placed into the back of a truck that drives away.
This is where the story ends, but for the speaker the story isn't actually over. The street is stained by the man's blood, as if the man's body were still there and casting a shadow, and when the speaker is walking around the area to carry out military policing duties, the speaker walks right over that stain again and again. The speaker is then relieved of duties and sent home for a rest period.
However, every time the speaker blinks, the speaker sees the dead man once more frantically running out of the bank. While sleeping, the speaker still wonders if the man was carrying a weapon or not. The speaker's dreams are filled with the image of the man's body being ripped apart as it's hit by dozens of rounds of bullets. The speaker has turned to alcohol and narcotics in an attempt to dull the flashbacks, but this isn't working.
The dead man appears to the speaker every time the speaker's eyes are closed. The man is entrenched in the mind of the person who killed him, metaphorically stuck behind enemy lines, rather than lying half-dead in a very hot, sandy country, or buried in a grave in the desert.
Instead, the dead man is right there with the speaker, in the present moment. The speaker was responsible for the man's gruesome death, and the speaker's hands are metaphorically stained with the looter's blood.
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“Remains” Themes
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War, Guilt, and Trauma
“Remains” describes a soldier’s experience of killing a man while stationed in a war zone. The title is a pun that plays on the idea of both human remains, referencing the body of the dead man, and the horrific memories that remain with the speaker after the fact. The poem examines the effects of guilt and trauma both during and after active duty, and suggests that the effects of wartime violence linger long after soldiers leave the battlefield.
At first the speaker seems distanced from the violence being described, as if it were simply part of being a soldier. To that end, the poem’s opening is conversational (“On another occasion …”) and suggests that the speaker is telling the story casually. The first two stanzas also contain very matter-of-fact statements, presenting the soldiers’ task as almost boring. Their violent reaction to the fleeing looter seems nearly automatic—this is simply what they've been trained to do.
Yet the speaker’s guilt and trauma become more apparent as the poem progresses and the speaker struggles to accept a role in what happened. The speaker repeatedly says that the looter was “probably armed, possibly not,” suggesting an internal conflict over whether this was justified self-defense in a war zone or the murder of an unarmed man. The deceased man is also only ever characterized as a “looter.” To be a “looter,” rather than simply a “man” or even a “guy,” removes an element of his humanity, which may be another attempt to diminish the guilt the speaker feels over his death. On a similar note, when discussing the actual act of killing, the speaker uses the first-person plural “we.” This shares the blame among all three soldiers who opened fire, again suggesting the speaker's need to feel distanced from what happened.
Of course, the traumatic memories described belong only to the speaker. And it quickly becomes apparent that the speaker can't stop vividly replaying the man’s death. For example, when talking about the gunfire, the speaker says, “I see every round as it rips through his life,” suggesting a horrifying dragging out of this violent act. This disturbing imagery—especially coming on the tail of such nonchalance—suggests that even as war normalizes or numbs people to extreme violence, life will never be the same for the speaker (or, of course, for the dead man). The speaker’s earlier use of everyday language, in turn, comes to highlight that this is an ordinary person who has carried out an extreme act of violence and is having difficulty processing it.
Later, the repetition of “week after week,” referring to the speaker “out on patrol,” comes to foreshadow the endless cycle of traumatic memories that will characterize the speaker's life “on leave.” The “blood-shadow” in this stanza also carries a ghostly connotation, suggesting the speaker is haunted by the grisly way the looter died. Finally, the speaker states that the man is “here in my head when I close my eyes,” and that the speaker carries “his bloody life in my bloody hands,” suggesting an unshakeable sense of guilt about the man’s death.
It’s worth noting that vivid flashbacks are characteristic of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and the repetition used throughout the poem mimics these symptoms of the illness. The poem never turns to medical diagnoses, of course, but still illustrates the lasting trauma and guilt soldiers face.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-30
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Remains”
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Lines 1-4
On another occasion, ...
... armed, possibly not.The poem's first line reveals that the speaker is beginning in the middle of a conversation—some "occasion" has already been talked about, so now the speaker turns to "another" one. Immediately this makes the poem feel casual and conversational, as if the speaker were simply telling a story to a friend over a drink or meal.
Certain words and phrases throughout this stanza also suggest that it's probably a soldier talking, and that this story is about something that happened while the soldier was on duty. In line 1, for instance, the phrase "we got sent out" indicates the speaker is working as part of a team or unit, and that they are acting under someone else's orders. Line 2, in which these people then "tackle looters raiding a bank," serves to further confirm that this action is taking place in an area of active conflict. In general, "looters" would be the term ascribed to thieves pillaging buildings during war time.
These opening lines also introduce the colloquial tone of voice the speaker will use throughout. This is exemplified in particular here by the speaker's use of the informal "legs it up the road" in line 3, where "legs it" is a British slang term for someone running away quickly. In other words, the speaker is saying that one of the "looters," upon seeing the soldiers arrive, tried to run away.
The fourth line of this stanza sets up an important point of reference that will carry through the rest of the poem. The speaker states that this man was "probably" carrying a weapon, but also that he "possibly" was not. This matters because, as becomes clear later in the poem, the speaker is overwhelmed by the guilt of potentially killing an unarmed man. On a formal level, the reassuring "probably" is filled with confident, /p/ and /b/ plosives, but this is immediately undermined by the tentative "possibly," where the hissing /s/ sound lingers with doubt.
The phrasing of this stanza is is fairly disjointed. Line 1 is enjambed, its meaning stumbling across the line break ("we got sent out / to tackle"), and both lines 1 and 4 feature caesuras that force pauses mid-line. ("occasion, we" and "armed, possibly"). These stops and pauses seem to mimic the speech patterns of someone telling a story they are perhaps uncomfortable with, as they try to build up momentum in order to reach the part they dread having to say out loud. Even as the speaker appears to be casual, this halting rhythm already suggests this nonchalance might be an act—that the speaker is actually struggling to reckon with the truth of what happened.
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Lines 5-8
Well myself and ...
... all letting fly,
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Lines 8-10
and I swear ...
... the other side. -
Lines 11-13
So we’ve hit ...
... image of agony. -
Lines 14-16
One of my ...
... of a lorry. -
Lines 17-20
End of story, ...
... home on leave. -
Lines 20-24
But I blink ...
... him out – -
Lines 25-30
he’s here in ...
... my bloody hands.
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“Remains” Symbols
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Blood
Blood in "Remains" symbolizes the speaker's guilt. The poem is quite graphic in its description of the looter's death, and first mentions the word "blood" in line 18. Here the speaker notes that the looter's "blood-shadow stays on the street, and out on patrol / I walk right over it week after week." Though the event is over—the story of this man's death has ended—the man's blood serves as a constant reminder of what happened. The speaker is forced to confront the memory of this incident over and over again.
Blood is connected even more explicitly with the speaker's guilt in the poem's final line, where the speaker says of the looter: "his bloody life in my bloody hands." To have "blood on your hands" is a common idiom that means to be responsible for something. Here, the poem is finally acknowledging that the speaker did indeed play a role in the looter's death, even if the speaker was part of a larger group of soldiers at the time. The speaker's metaphorically blood-stained hands reflect the intensity of the speaker's guilt.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 18-19: “His blood-shadow stays on the street, and out on patrol / I walk right over it week after week.”
- Line 30: “his bloody life in my bloody hands.”
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“Remains” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Enjambment
The enjambment in "Remains" suggests a somewhat halting, disjointed, and even nervous retelling of the story. It also heightens the conversational nature of the poem; the sentences aren't forced into aligning perfectly with the poem's line or even stanza breaks. This mimics natural speech patterns, while, in certain moments, also indicating that the speaker isn't as comfortable talking about this as it might seem.
Line 1 breaks just before the speaker says why these soldiers were "sent out." The enjambment subtly echoes the content here: it's as if the soldiers are "sent out" across the line break, the blank space representing their lack of agency. They are just following orders; if they're sent out, they must go, even if they're not sure why yet.
An even more evocative moment of enjambment comes in the break between stanzas 2 and 3:
... and I swear
I see every round ...
On the one hand, this enjambment creates a sense of building of tension and anticipation: what, the reader wonders, does the speaker "swear"? The white space between the stanzas might also represent the speaker's apprehension about saying the next line—because this is the line that describes, in graphic detail, how the looter died.
There's then another enjambment between stanzas 5 and 6:
But I blink
and he bursts again through the doors of the bank.
The white space here evokes that blink, while the enjambment again makes one stanza spill over into the next; the next line bursts onto the page just as the looter bursts into the speaker's mind.
Where enjambment appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2: “out / to”
- Lines 5-6: “else / are”
- Lines 8-9: “swear / I”
- Lines 11-12: “times / and”
- Lines 14-15: “by / and”
- Lines 18-19: “patrol / I”
- Lines 20-21: “blink / and”
- Lines 27-28: “land / or”
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Colloquialism
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Repetition
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Alliteration
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Sibilance
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Imagery
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Consonance
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Caesura
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Polysyndeton
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Assonance
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“Remains” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Looter
- Legs it
- Armed
- Letting fly
- Round
- Agony
- Lorry
- Blood-shadow
- Out on patrol
- Home on leave
- Sun-stunned
- Sand-smothered
Looter-
(Location in poem: Line 2: “looters”; Line 11: “looter”)
Thieves, particularly those who steal from businesses or homes during a war, riot, or other social disturbance.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Remains”
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Form
"Remains" is made up of seven unrhymed quatrains (four-line stanzas) and one final, unrhymed couplet (a two-line stanza). At first glance, the poem seems relatively organized; the stanzas are, for the most part, regular. But when actually reading through the poem, it becomes clear that there's chaos under the surface. Though the first seven stanzas all have four lines, the speaker's phrases themselves often don't line up with the form at hand. That is, the speaker frequently enjambs lines or inserts jerky pauses in the middle of lines. The speaker even uses enjambment across stanza breaks, suggesting that the form here isn't actually as steady as it looks. The speaker is trying to keep things orderly, to tell this story in a logical way, but ultimately fails to do so. The final two lines, then, feel almost anticlimactic; the poem ends abruptly, sooner than the reader has come to expect. It feels as if the speaker suddenly has nothing left to say—or, perhaps, the speaker is so overwhelmed by guilt and trauma that continuing is impossible.
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Meter
The poem has no regular meter, and instead is written in free verse. This makes sense, given that it's meant to feel very casual and conversational; the speaker seems to be telling this tale off the cuff, and hasn't rehearsed any of these lines beforehand. As such, the poem is made up of lines that vary greatly in length and rhythm.
One line does stand out from the rest, however: line 27, the longest line of the poem, which has 14 syllables:
not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land
By this point in the poem, the speaker has transitioned from telling this story in a detached manner to seeming entirely consumed and overwhelmed by trauma and guilt. This run-on line might suggest the way that speaker's thoughts are running out of control; the sheer length of this line suggests that the speaker is becoming increasingly frantic and distraught.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Remains" has no set rhyme scheme. Instead it's written in free verse, and for the most part mimics the patterns of everyday speech. The poem doesn't feel overly literary or poetic, but rather like an ordinary person telling a story. This is deliberate on the part of the poet: this is a poem about the horrific, everyday realities of war—and the language takes care not to glorify what's happening.
That said, rhyme does appear occasionally throughout the poem. The clearest example comes in the seventh stanza, where "land" in line 27 rhymes fully with "sand" in line 28; the final line of the poem, "hands," rhymes as well. There's also a great deal of consonance in this stanza, as well as assonance of the long /i/ sound that feels a bit like rhyme in lines 25 and 26:
he’s here in my head when I close my eyes,
dug in behind enemy lines,Altogether, this creates a heightening of the poem's language that appropriately appears at a moment of heightened emotion. The speaker has begun the poem with a remarkably casual tone, but here gets lost in and overwhelmed by the traumatic memories being described. The entrance of rhyme reflects that shift in tone.
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“Remains” Speaker
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The speaker in "Remains" is a soldier who has returned from active duty and "remains" haunted by the horrors of war. Simon Armitage spoke with soldiers when writing this poem, which is based specifically on the stories of a young man who fought in Basra, Iraq. However, the speaker is never specifically named or gendered, which helps the speaker feel like an everyman (or everywoman), just a regular person thrust into horrifying circumstances. This sense of the speaker being a regular person is further supported by the colloquial language and slang used throughout the poem.
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“Remains” Setting
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"Remains" is initially set in an unknown war zone. Armitage specifically based "Remains" on the stories of a soldier in Iraq, though no country is named in the poem itself. That said, this place is described as very hot and sandy, suggesting that it is indeed located somewhere in the Middle East. The references to machine guns and trucks further reveal that this is a tale about modern warfare.
The initial part of the speaker's story is set in the (probably) near-past, while the latter half of the poem takes place in the speaker's present. This latter part of the poem moves to the speaker's homeland, but this place is also left unnamed. Based on the British vocabulary throughout, though—words like "bloody" and "lorry"—it's likely that the speaker's home is somewhere in Britain.
In a more abstract sense, the poem is also set within the speaker's mind. This is particularly true in the second half of the poem, when the speaker describes having vivid flashbacks and being unable to sleep or dream without replaying this moment of violence.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Remains”
Literary Context
"Remains" was written by Simon Armitage and published in 2008 as part of his collection The Not Dead. The poems were also part of a documentary (also titled The Not Dead) that was shown on British television in 2007. The film and the collection both explore the stories of veterans who have returned from war zones and still struggle with the horrors they witnessed during active duty.
In its focus on the visceral horror and moral ambiguity of warfare, "Remains" owes a debt to the poetry of Wilfred Owen, a British soldier in World War I who explored the gruesome drudgery and waste of war in poems like "Exposure," "Dulce et Decorum Est," "Anthem for Doomed Youth," and "Futility." Also of interest is Welsh poet Owen Sheers's 2005 poem "Mametz Wood," which similarly uses graphic imagery to describe the lingering trauma of warfare. Carol Ann Duffy's "War Photographer" and Jane Weir's "Poppies" are other poems that explore themes related to the effects of modern warfare on the British psyche.
There may be also some influence from Shakespeare's Macbeth towards the end of "Remains." The image of the bloodstained hands could be a reference to Act 2, Scene 2 of Macbeth, in which Macbeth suggests his hands are so stained with blood after murdering Duncan, he will never get them clean. In both Macbeth and "Remains," the blood becomes a symbol of the guilt the characters feel.
Historical Context
"Remains" never mentions a specific war, though the references to the desert suggest that the speaker served as a soldier somewhere in the Middle East. The poem likely refers to the conflicts begun in Iraq or Afghanistan in the early 2000s, part of the global "War on Terror" launched by U.S. President George W. Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Thousands of civilians were killed and millions more displaced from their homes throughout these conflicts. Soldiers involved were also subject to heavy casualties, and many have suffered from severe mental health issues following their return home.
While "Remains" never attempts to diagnose the speaker, it relates symptoms typical of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), such as disturbed sleep and vivid flashbacks. One survey found that one in five returning soldiers have suffered from major depression and/or PTSD. "Remains" and the other poems within The Not Dead speak to the modern interest in better understanding and treating veterans with these lasting mental health issues.
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More “Remains” Resources
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External Resources
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"The Not Dead" Review — A short review of the collection in which "Remains" is published.
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"The Remains" Read Aloud by a Soldier — A British soldier who served in Iraq reads Armitage's poem in a Channel 4 documentary.
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Simon Armitage on Poetry — An interview in which Armitage discusses the importance of poetry and why he writes.
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PTSD and Shell Shock — A breakdown of the history of post-war trauma.
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Armitage's Biography — An overview of all of Simon Armitage's life and work from the Poetry Foundation.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Simon Armitage
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