Explore The Effects Of Conflict In 'Remains'

Compare how the effects of conflict are presented in ‘Remains’ and one other poem you have studied? ‘Remains’ by Wilfred Owen is a war poem that presents an unnamed conflict where the soldier shoots the looter, but is unsure whether the man was armed or not. If the latter case, the shooting would have been unnecessary and would be thought as an act of murder. This acts as an emotional conflict arising to the soldier due to the situation. Similarly, in ‘Poppies’, the mother suffers from an emotional conflict arising from her yearning for her son as the mother seems to be speaking to the memories of her son. By the usage of metaphor and imagery, both poets offer an emphasis on the idea of internal conflict arising to the persona of each poem. Both poets use metaphor to offer their reader a vivid image either on the guilt the narrator is feeling leading to the PTSD he suffers or the yearning of the mother for her son leading to an emotional breakdown of the mother. Armitage uses the metaphor “[the soldier] see every run as it rips through [the looter’s] life - I see broad

As ‘Remains’ is used to portray how the soldier is being exposed to the guilt though shooting a looter, the imagery used in ‘Remains’ is to vividly portray the death of looter. The word bloody in ‘Remains’, from “[the looter’s] bloody life in [the soldier’s] bloody hands,” we can successfully infer that he cannot reconcile whether it was an innocent act or not, but because he doesn’t know, the effects of PTSD has damaged his mental health. Likewise, using the word ‘bloody’ in this context may suggest that the guilt lingers within him. Furthermore, the repetition of the word bloody shows how the speaker finds it difficult to differentiate between the looter and himself, and that his guilt has blurred the normal process of logic in his mind showing the conflict within the soldier