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Texts in Shared Contexts: Regeneration by Pat Barker (Characterisation…

- - - - Hardened attitude to love and relationships, traditional
- - - - "I needed to write from the perspective of a character who was intelligent, compassionate and well informed but who, like me and like the reader, had no direct experience of the fighting in France" - Barker in 2012 writing about Regeneration for the Guardian online
        
        This allows Barker to write about the Great War from an unusual viewpoint, as no real 'battles' take place in Regeneration, at least not in a literal sense. Conventionally, in the canon of literature produced during or in reaction to WW1, combat on the Western Front is a central point of focus, as this is where the war most obviously took place. However, writing from the perspective of psychiatrist William Rivers, Barker is able to explore one of the most startling and dehumanising effects of the war and the battles that took place in the men's minds on their path to recovery.
      - The character of Prior is purposefully constructed by Barker to "challenge Rivers in ways that his other patients, who revered him to the point of idolatry, were incapable of doing".
      - The Real Life WHR Rivers
        
        1864-1922
        
        psychiatrist, neurologist and anthropologist
        
        studied nerve regeneration with Henry Head between 1903-1907 - this research inspired the title of the novel as well as several of the trilogy's key themes of healing, trauma and injury
        
        worked at Craiglockhart War Hospital between 1916 and 1917
        
        introduced Freud's work to British medical practice, pioneering the 'talking cure' which encouraged sufferers of shell shock to consciously confront their repressed traumatic front-line experiences
        
        In an interview with journalist Wera Reusch, Barker described the historical Rivers as a "very humane, a very compassionate person who was tormented really by the suffering he saw, and very sceptical about the war, but at the same time he didn't feel he could go all the way and say no, stop"
        
        At Craiglockhart, Rivers treated Sassoon for an "anti-war complex"; he wrote about Sassoon under the alias 'Patient B' in his book, Conflict and Dreams, which Barker read in her youth
    - - Poetry - another view into representing the war in writing. WW1 literature, work between the poets shows how much work goes into poetry, catharsis, part of the recovery process
    - - Paul Taylor (Independent on Sunday) called Owen and Sassoon's exchanges 'artificial'
      - Biographical info:
        
        1893-1918
        
        shocking, realistic war poetry
        
        Met Siegfried Sassoon while convalescing at Craiglockhart War Hospital
  - - - 'Mutism seems to spring from a conflict between wanting to say something, and knowing that if you do say it the consequences will be disastrous... for the private soldiers the consequences of speaking his mind are always going to be far worse than they would for an officer.' - page 96, chapter 9
        
        Barker uses the professional status of Rivers to
      - Links to the wider theme of Speech and Silence that runs through the novel
      - It's usually thought that neurasthenic stammers arise from the same kind of conflict as mutism, a conflict between wanting to speak and knowing that w-what you've got to say is not acceptable.'
      - Rivers has a lifelong genetic stammer and his father was a speech therapist - 2 examples of irony as it is part of Rivers's job to restore speech to mute and stammering soldiers - why do you think Barker includes these historical facts?
      - Manifests in the novel with the characters of Owen, Prior, Callan and Rivers
        
        Symbolic significance
    - - trapped inside the trench, inescapable as it is inside their minds - manifests itself in descriptions of the natural world
        
        'like a trench without the sky'
  - - - Symbolic significance:
        
        Rivers's fear that he is silencing his patients as the bit is used to control a horse, like a muzzle on a dog
        
        Comparisons can be made between Rivers's actions in the dream and Yealland's inhumane treatment, in that they both use force and cause the patient considerable pain
        
        Speaks of Rivers's moral dilemma: he is concerned that his treatment is fundamentally no different than Yealland's, as he questions whether they are "both in the business of silencing" as both are fuelling the war machine by sending men back to the front
        
        Freudian dream theory - Rivers thinks this is a manifestation of what he is thinking
        
        quite an obvious symbol of control, also a symbol of the dehumanising treatment of men in war
    - - 'They looked, Rivers thought, almost comically symbolic: Time and Death invading the Arcadian scene' - page 98, chapter 9
        
        Symbolic significance:
        
        'Arcadia (utopia) refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature'
        
        The scene is ironic as their playful behaviour is incongruous with the symbol of death that they carry
        
        As the scythe is a symbol of death, the cutting down the grass is like cutting down an entire generation of men
        
        The madness of the scene could be a reflection of the madness of returning to war
        
        Barker's subtle hint to the reader that Rivers is questioning the morality of his role in healing the men only for them to return to war and his responsibility in their deaths
        
        clunky inclusion of symbolism as Barker directly identifies them being 'symbolic'
  - - - Barker believes that we can only understand physical and mental distress if we are close to it; this belief is reflected in her blunt, sometimes, graphic descriptions.
        
        Wilfred Owen and the Poetry in the pity???
      - Background and Inspiration for Regeneration:
        
        Barker directly attributes the inspiration for the novel to her husband, a neurologist familiar with the work and writing of WHR Rivers.
        
        Partly inspired by her childhood curiosity in her grandfather's experiences in the trenches and the bayonet wound he suffered there, both of which he never spoke of. For Barker, this was a compelling "kind of silence... that invites imaginative exploration".
        
        wanted to write about WW1 but not a pseudo-combatant novel
        
        Barker said, on receiving the Booker Prize in 1995 'The Somme is like the Holocaust. It revealed things about mankind that we cannot come to terms with and cannot forget. It can never become the past'.
- - - - Manifests in the conversations between Sassoon and Owen. Barker writes that in trying to create the most accurate descriptions of their experience in war, they are "trying to express the experience as vividly as possible, while at the same time controlling the emotions it evokes and distancing themselves of it. This highly self-conscious use of language in therapy and poetry forms a brittle crust over the traumatic experiences that poetry and therapy tried to address." These were the horrors that the men endured on the front line and repressed, leading them to suffer the symptoms of shell-shock as they internalised their emotions.
    - - "In psychotherapy the rules of normal conversation don't apply", says Barker writing for the Guardian online about Regeneration in 2012. "The therapist listens intently for nuances of meaning. Rivers's conversations with his patients are like that. Only the manipulative Prior attempts to break the mould."
      - “On the face of it he seemed to be congratulating himself on dealing with patients more humanely than Yealland, but then why the mood of self-accusation? In the dream he stood in Yealland’s place. The dream seemed to be saying, in dream language, don’t flatter yourself. There is no distinction.”
  - - - Sassoon's 'Finished with the War: A Soldier's Declaration'
      - Poetry
- - - - In the text:
        
        As the story is told mostly through dialogue, the hospital is never described in much detail; the reader learns of its physical appearance through the perceptions of the characters.
        
        In Rivers's perception* of the hospital's exterior at the end of chapter 1, 'Nobody... could fail to be daunted by the sheer gloomy, cavernous bulk of the place', Barker's use of the evaluative adjectives 'gloomy' and 'cavernous' create a formidable and oppressive image. The connotations of fear evoked by 'daunted' suggest to the reader that the building is trench-like, causing the shell-shocked soldiers to be confronted with the memories of their war experience even before they have started treatment. Barker reinforces this portrayal through the simile later in the novel of 'like a trench without a sky', in which she directly relates the two locations. In both instances, this is evidence of how the men are haunted by what they witnessed, seeing elements of the war even when they physically leave the trenches, thus illustrating how the war continued within the minds of the shell-shocked soldiers, leaving them at war with themselves.
        
        *It must be remembered that this vision of the hospital is given from Rivers's point of view, a man with no first hand experience of the trenches. However, this deep undertanding of how the men viewed the hospital is evidence of how empathetic he was as a doctor.
        
        Upon seeing the building for the first time in chapter 3, Graves' reaction to the exterior, described as a 'massive yellow-grey facade', is one of disbelief and shock: 'My God.' Barker here gives no further evaluation of the setting and the reader is left to infer what is meant by his reaction, adding to her paradoxical portrayal of the setting, which is at once a military institution and a haunted house; real , yet also imaginary; a place of dread and also a place of healing.
        
        Craiglockhart also exists as a place of 'screams and running footsteps', where each patient is confined to their own neurotic world, even though there is no physical privacy. Although the institution has strict rules and regulations (such as the men having to wear uniform and being punished for returning late at night like Prior), the patients minds cannot be so easily controlled.