2. A01 (12 marks) A02 (12 marks) A03 (6 marks)
Clear and intelligent interpretation of the poems
Clear and precise comparison of the poems
Select a wide range of quotations which justify your points
A (12 marks)
Analyse the poets’ use of language
Analyse the poets’ use of structure
Clearly explain the effects on the reader
Use subject specific terminology
A (6 marks)
Relate the poems to their historical and social contexts

3. What is Armitage’s ‘Remains’ about?
Knowledge
Armitage wrote this poem after interviewing a soldier who served in the first war in Iraq.
Skills:
Close reading of the poem, focussed on meaning and content.
Understanding:
Annotate your anthology to demonstrate your understanding.

4. Listen to Armitage reading the poem here.
On another occasion, we got sent out
to tackle looters raiding a bank.
And one of them legs it up the road,
probably armed, possibly not.
Well myself and somebody else and somebody else
are all of the same mind,
so all three of us open fire.
Three of a kind all letting fly, and I swear
I see every round as it rips through his life –
I see broad daylight on the other side.
So we’ve hit this looter a dozen times
and he’s there on the ground, sort of inside out,
pain itself, the image of agony.
One of my mates goes by
and tosses his guts back into his body.
Then he’s carted off in the back of a lorry.
End of story, except not really.
His blood-shadow stays on the street, and out on patrol
I walk right over it week after week.
Then I’m home on leave. But I blink
and he bursts again through the doors of the bank.
Sleep, and he’s probably armed, and possibly not.
Dream, and he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds.
And the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out –
he’s here in my head when I close my eyes,
dug in behind enemy lines,
not left for dead in some distant, sun-stunned, sand-smothered land
or six-feet-under in desert sand,
but near to the knuckle, here and now,
his bloody life in my bloody hands.
Listen to Armitage reading the poem here.
Read the poem over yourselves, and listen to Armitage read it. Discuss it on your tables/in groups and decide what you think it’s about.
The actual ‘narrative’ is quite straightforward: really try to interpret the message Armitage is offering us about power, conflict, war, guilt etc.
The poem is based on the account of a British soldier who served in Iraq!
A01
Clear and intelligent interpretation of the poems
Select a wide range of quotations which justify your points

5. How is Armitage’s ‘Remains’ written?
Knowledge
Language devices and structure are how Armitage crafts his poem for impact. He uses lots of graphic imagery.
Skills:
Close reading of the poem, focussed on language and structure.
Understanding:
Annotate your anthology to demonstrate your understanding.

6. Identify and analyse the purpose and effect of:
Graphic violent imagery
Repetition
Sibilance
Metaphors
A02
Analyse the poets’ use of language
Clearly explain the effects on the reader
Use subject specific terminology

7. “His blood-shadow stays on the street”
Literally, metaphorically, symbolically…
“His blood-shadow stays on the street”
Literally, the dead Iraqi has bled all over the street. It shows how vicious and violent it was.
Metaphorically, the idea is that what the soldier has done stays with him and he can still remember it. His memory is stained, just as the street was. Symbolically, it’s about how this happens to all soldiers after all wars – they can’t forget what they’ve done.

8. “dug in behind enemy lines”
Thursday October 19th 2017
Literally, metaphorically, symbolically…
“dug in behind enemy lines”
“the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out”
“his bloody life on my bloody hands”
“three of a kind all letting fly”
“some distant sun-stunned sand-smothered land”

9. Good points Areas to develop
Love the playful use of ‘remain’ as a textual detail
Forgot the word ‘literally’
Good coverage of metaphorical/symbolic meanings
Could have discussed repetition of the adjective ‘bloody’ and its effect

10. Good points Areas to develop
Clearly follows the structure
Spellings are a concern, and it isn’t written as a coherent paragraph
Excellent range of comments: particularly in the ‘metaphorically…’ section

11. Good points Areas to develop
Clearly structured
Introduce the quotation properly: Armitage says of the looter being chucked in the lorry, “end of story, except not really.”
Use of “although” to introduce different perspectives

12. Good points Areas to develop
Well contextualised
Engage more with language, e.g. harsh consonance of ‘drink and drugs’ and its effect
Clearly structured

13. Why was Armitage’s ‘Remains’ written?
Knowledge
Armitage is passing judgement on the war in Iraq – as well as war in general – and the impact it has on the soldiers once the war is over.
Skills:
Link contextual factors to textual details.
Understanding:
Annotate your anthology to demonstrate your understanding.

14. The first 4 stanzas tell the story of what happened
The first 4 stanzas tell the story of what happened. The final 4 tell the reader about the consequences.
There is a clear pattern of stanzas of 4 lines (quatrains) but the eighth and final stanza is only 2 lines long.
The reader is expecting one thing but given another. The final stanza seems to have been ‘cut short’ prematurely. What might Armitage be saying about the Iraq conflict?
A02
Analyse the poets’ use of structure
Use subject specific terminology
A03
Relate the poems to their historical and social contexts

15. How are ‘Remains’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ similar?
Knowledge
Both poets use stanza length to convey something.
Skills:
Make connections between the two poems.
Understanding:
Write a fifteen minute essay response to the comparison question.

16. Compare how the lengths of the stanzas reveals something about the nature of conflict in ‘Remains’ and in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’.
A01
Clear and precise comparison of the poems