The Annotated Edition
Remains by Simon Armitage
- Poet
- Simon Armitage
- Composed
- 2008 · Contemporary
- Core theme
- Despair
In copyright · excerpt not reproduced
Read the full poem at Pomona, 2008.
Our analysis below quotes only short phrases from the poem under fair-dealing criticism and commentary. The complete poem is available through the publisher above.
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§01Themes
Recurring themes
TeacherAQA scaffold — preview
AO1 — Interpretation + textual reference
Armitage presents the speaker's guilt as an inescapable psychological wound that refuses to heal over time. The soldier's repeated insistence that responsibility for the shooting was shared — that it was a group decision, a collective act — …
- AO2 — Language, form, structure (with effect)
- AO3 — Context woven into close reading
- Comparison hooks
- Common student errors
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