Character analysis
The Soldier (Narrator)
in Remains by Simon Armitage
The Soldier (Narrator) serves as the voice in Remains, a dramatic monologue where a veteran reflects on a pivotal moment from his deployment: the shooting of a looter. He embodies the roles of witness, participant, and troubled survivor. At the beginning, he portrays himself as part of a group of soldiers facing a threat with a sense of collective determination—"so we all of us open fire"—implying shared accountability. However, as the poem unfolds, this sense of community fades, isolating him as the one who fires the fatal shot and, importantly, who chooses to "finish" the wounded looter at close range. This choice becomes the catalyst for his psychological breakdown. In the second part of the poem, the soldier returns to civilian life, but the dead man haunts him: he appears in the narrator's "bloody hands" during the day and invades his nightmares. The soldier resorts to alcohol and drugs in a desperate attempt to drown out the painful memories, expressing his trauma in raw, everyday language—"the drink and the drugs won't flush him out." His main characteristics include brutal honesty, a tough working-class bravado that gradually falters, and a deep self-awareness that he struggles to express. By the end of the poem, the word "remains" carries multiple meanings—the corpse, the persistent guilt, and whatever is left of the narrator himself—highlighting his journey as one of irreparable moral and psychological harm.
Who is The Soldier (Narrator)?
The Soldier-Narrator of Simon Armitage's dramatic monologue Remains is a British veteran recounting a single, devastating incident from active deployment: the shooting of a looter. He speaks in a voice that is recognisably working-class, colloquial, and deliberately understated — "I see broad daylight on the other side" treats death with a bluntness that initially reads as bravado. Yet beneath that tough register lies a man in the grip of severe, unresolved psychological trauma. He is simultaneously witness, perpetrator, and victim of the same event, occupying all three roles without being able to reconcile them. Armitage gives him no name, no rank, and no country — the anonymity is the point. He stands for a generation of soldiers returned from theatres of war (the poem draws on accounts collected for the The Not Dead documentary) whose inner damage is invisible to the civilian world around them.
What is The Soldier (Narrator)'s arc and motivation?
The poem's structure mirrors the Soldier's psychological collapse. In the opening stanzas he uses the collective pronoun — "so we all of us open fire" — distributing guilt across the patrol. This grammatical choice reflects his initial, instinctive motivation to shelter himself behind shared accountability. The fracture comes when he alone steps forward to deliver the finishing shot to the wounded looter. From that moment the "we" dissolves and the poem's grammar shifts toward isolation. His motivation in the war zone was professional duty, possibly self-preservation — the parenthetical qualifier "probably armed, possibly not" reveals that even at the time he was not certain of the threat. Back home, his motivation becomes purely survival: to silence memory through "the drink and the drugs," to sleep without the dead man surfacing. He never fully achieves either goal, and by the poem's close he has no constructive motivation left — only the compulsion to keep reliving.
What are The Soldier (Narrator)'s key moments?
- The killing shot at close range: After the group volley, the Soldier alone finishes the wounded looter. This is the poem's moral pivot. The distance of a volley becomes the intimate proximity of an individual act, and with it comes undeniable personal ownership of the death.
- "Probably armed, possibly not": This throwaway parenthesis is the Soldier's most honest moment. Placed almost casually mid-narrative, it retrospectively destabilises the entire justification for the shooting and signals the doubt that will feed his guilt.
- The image in his hands: The dead man appears in "the bloody hands" of the Soldier during daylight hours. The hands — the instruments of the killing — become the site of haunting, merging body memory with psychological trauma.
- Drink, drugs, and failed escape: The Soldier's confession that "the drink and the drugs won't flush him out" marks the collapse of every coping strategy. It is the moment where false bravado is entirely abandoned and raw desperation takes over.
- The final "remains": The closing word crystallises the poem's central ambiguity — the looter's body, the persistent memory, and whatever fragment of the Soldier's former self has survived.
What are The Soldier (Narrator)'s most important relationships?
With the Looter / Dead Man: The Looter is both a real person killed in action and a spectral figure who refuses to stay dead. In the Soldier's waking life he materialises in the hands that shot him; in sleep he invades dreams with relentless regularity. The relationship is one of unwanted, inescapable intimacy — the Soldier knows this man's last moments more completely than he knows almost anything else, and that knowledge becomes his prison.
With the Comrades: The comrades function as a psychological buffer that the poem gradually removes. Their collective presence in the opening stanzas gives the Soldier plausible deniability; their disappearance from the domestic scenes underscores that guilt cannot be shared once the self has privately accepted ownership. Their absence is as structurally important as their presence.
How is The Soldier (Narrator) connected to the other characters?
- The Looter
The Looter is the object of the Soldier's fatal action and the source of his PTSD. The Soldier shoots him, administers the killing blow, and then cannot escape his image—the Looter's presence in memory and nightmare defines the entire psychological arc of the poem.
- The Comrades
The Comrades initially provide the Soldier with a sense of diffused responsibility ('so we all of us open fire'), but they fade from the narrative as the guilt becomes singular. Their absence in the poem's domestic scenes underscores the Soldier's ultimate isolation with his trauma.
- The Dead Man
The Dead Man is the spectral form the Looter takes in the Soldier's haunted memory—appearing in his hands, his dreams, and his waking visions. This figure embodies the Soldier's inability to leave the war behind and represents the psychological 'remains' that give the poem its title.
What are The Soldier (Narrator)’s most famous quotes?
“Probably armed, possibly not.”
The soldier-narrator (composite veteran voice)
Analysis
"Probably armed, possibly not" is a line from Siegfried Sassoon's poem "Remains," which stands out as one of the most psychologically intense poems from the Iraq War era. This particular rendering is included in Simon Armitage's 2008 collection The Not Dead, inspired by the testimonies of British veterans. In the poem, a soldier recounts a traumatic event where he and his unit shoot at a looter. The phrase encapsulates the split-second, chaotic reasoning that dictates life-and-death choices in battle: the soldier acts on partial information, and this uncertainty becomes a source of enduring trauma. The line hits hard because of its casual tone — the tentative, bureaucratic choice of words ("probably," "possibly") sharply contrasts with the irreversible act of killing. On a thematic level, the quote raises questions about moral responsibility and the psychological toll of modern warfare. This uncertainty lingers; it follows the speaker in both dreams and reality, showing how post-traumatic stress arises not only from violence witnessed but also from acts of violence committed within a morally ambiguous context. The poem compels readers to grapple with the same unresolved doubt that the soldier carries indefinitely.
Questions readers ask about The Soldier (Narrator)
Who are the Soldier's comrades in 'Remains', and what role do they play?
The comrades are the other soldiers on patrol who open fire alongside the narrator in the poem's opening action. Their collective presence allows the Soldier to initially spread guilt across the group — "so we all of us open fire" — giving him a sense of shared accountability. They vanish from the poem's domestic scenes, leaving the Soldier entirely alone with his trauma and underscoring that guilt, once privately owned, cannot be redistributed.
What is the significance of the quote "Probably armed, possibly not" in 'Remains'?
"Probably armed, possibly not" is the poem's most honest and destabilising line. Placed almost casually mid-narrative, this parenthetical admission reveals that the Soldier was not certain the looter posed a genuine threat even at the moment of shooting. It undermines every justification for the killing and identifies the seed of doubt that continues to feed his guilt and psychological collapse long after he returns home.
How does the Soldier's relationship with the Dead Man drive his trauma in 'Remains'?
The Dead Man is the spectral form the killed looter takes in the Soldier's haunted mind, and he refuses to stay dead. He materialises in the Soldier's "bloody hands" during daylight and invades his nightmares at night. Because the Soldier delivered the fatal close-range shot himself, this haunting is relentlessly intimate — the Dead Man embodies the guilt the Soldier cannot escape, becoming the psychological "remains" the poem's title signals.
Why does the Soldier in 'Remains' turn to drink and drugs?
The Soldier turns to alcohol and drugs as a desperate attempt to silence the intrusive memory of the man he killed. Back in civilian life, conventional coping mechanisms have failed him, and substance use becomes his last resort. However, even this strategy collapses — he confesses that "the drink and the drugs won't flush him out," marking the point where every form of escape is exhausted and raw psychological desperation fully replaces his earlier bravado.
What is the Soldier's fate by the end of 'Remains'?
By the poem's close the Soldier has no path to recovery — only the compulsion to keep reliving the shooting. Drink and drugs have failed to silence the Dead Man's image; the haunting continues in waking hours and in sleep. The final word, "remains," captures his fate on multiple levels: the looter's corpse, the persistent guilt, and whatever fragment of the Soldier's former self has survived — suggesting the damage is irreparable.
Is the Soldier in 'Remains' presented as a villain or a victim?
Armitage presents the Soldier as neither straightforwardly villainous nor straightforwardly innocent — he is both perpetrator and victim of the same act. The admission "probably armed, possibly not" shows he acted under genuine institutional ambiguity rather than clear malice. Yet he also chose to deliver the killing blow alone. The poem holds both truths simultaneously, inviting readers to see him as a man morally damaged by a system that placed him in an impossible situation.
How does the Soldier's use of "we" versus "I" change across 'Remains'?
At the poem's opening the Soldier uses the collective pronoun — "so we all of us open fire" — to distribute moral responsibility across the patrol. Once he alone steps forward to finish the wounded looter, the grammar shifts toward isolation and individual ownership of the act. This pronoun shift is the clearest structural signal of the Soldier's psychological journey from shared accountability to singular, inescapable guilt.
Use this in your essay
How does Armitage use shifts in pronoun (we/I) to track the Soldier's psychological journey from collective action to individual guilt?
Explore the significance of domestic and civilian settings in *Remains*
how does the intrusion of war imagery into everyday life illuminate the Soldier's trauma?
"Probably armed, possibly not" is the moral heart of the poem. To what extent does Armitage present the Soldier as a victim of institutional ambiguity rather than personal moral failure?
Analyse how Armitage's colloquial language and working-class register both mask and expose the Soldier's psychological damage.
The word "remains" operates on multiple levels simultaneously. Discuss how Armitage uses this single word to unify the poem's themes of death, memory, guilt, and identity.