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W.H.R.Rivers - Coggle Diagram

- - - - This greatly counterbalances the fact that Rivers, who has an honorary military rank (Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps), and whose job is to treat soldiers, has not been to the Western Front, nor had any direct experience of warfare.
- - - - While in a conversation with Broadbent, Rivers demonstrates his atypicality as a doctor at Craiglockhart. Although Broadbent plays a very minor role in the story, he is used to demonstrate that even among good doctors at Craiglockhart, there is still despicable ones. Moreover, despite Rivers's normally gentle demeanour, his hostility and outright refusal of Broadbent's request suggests that although he is nurturing towards his patients, he is not a passive figure.
      - Rivers is beginning to break the typical conventions of masculinity by rebelling against the Victorian Hero ideal. Utilising the harsh verb 'despised', Barker is showing the passion that Rivers displays to the topic of masculinity; she is showing that Rivers's views on warfare are beginning to adapt
      - Barker uses this moment to emphasise the humanity of men at war and the 'fear' that they felt. She also demonstrates the ease of judging the fearful soldiers and how fear can emasculate men
    - - During a conversation with Prior, Rivers explains to Prior that war neurosis is not caused by one event, but by the 'erosion' of the mind's ability to handle trauma and grief
      - Rivers's statement that trauma erodes the mind rather than snaps it, and that it can happen to anyone, suggests that though society views mental breakdown as cowardice or moral failure, it is actually the mind's natural reaction to traumatic experience and unsustainable circumstances
      - Barker is criticising the effects of warfare by demonstrating the effects of war on the mentality of the soldiers. Utilising the verb 'erosion', Barker suggests that warfare breaks and melts the characteristics and minds of the soldiers. She also implies the helplessness of soldiers too by suggesting 'you can't get away from it', possibly referring to the inevitability of war neurosis
    - - Though many patients see Rivers as a sort of father-figure, Layard had called him a "male-mother", in part because Layard had a bad relationship with his father and in part because Rivers is in a nurturing role, which is often considered feminine. Rivers, however, resented the idea that caring for someone is inherently womanly. He thought that all officers have a motherly quality to them in the way they care for soldiers. The great irony is that even the foot soldiers who enlist in the war seeking a masculine adventure find themselves sitting in trenches in "'feminine' passivity" waiting for something to happen to them.
      - Again, Rivers embodies character traits that are both masculine and feminine. He is himself a stoic individual and yet tremendously caring and nurturing. Rivers's practice and characterisation thus suggests that men can and should possess traits stereotypically masculine and feminine traits, which itself would suggest that society's expectations that men be masculine and women be feminine ought to be reexamined. Once again, the novel suggests that war makes this even more apparent, as soldiers are placed in passive, almost domestic roles.
    - - Sassoon's palms sweat and his heart pounds, even though this hallucination was far more dignified and peaceful than his past ones had been; no nightmares, no gore. He needs to speak to Rivers, but when morning comes, Sassoon discovers that Rivers left already on an early train. Rivers, he realises, has entirely taken his father's place within Sassoon's mind
      - Parent-child relationships surface occasionally, exploring the manner in which the parent-child model dominates society in such a way that even adults of equal age will arrange themselves into parental or maternal situations. This is evident both in Sassoon's relationship with Rivers, as well as his maternal relationship as officer to his troops, who are effectively his children
    - - Rivers arrives in Burns's seaside town, Aldeburgh. They meet on the train platform and take a walk on the water's edge. It is difficult to tell Burn's mental state; he is terribly thin, though barbed wire and sand bags seem not to bother him as they used to
      - Burns's mental breakdown and persistent war neurosis not only separate him from his military unit, but also seemingly from his family, who are conspicuously absent. This exemplifies the alienation soldiers and combat veterans often feel, especially those plagued either with physical injuries or traumatic memories. Rivers's observation that Burns seems partly like a small child and partly like an old man suggests that the war has taken away Burns's opportunity to live a normal life, to grow and age and mature in the normal course
    - - Prior's mind flashes to an image of the trench, the eyeball in his palm, and Prior is caught between his impulse not to tell Sarah anything about the war so he can take shelter in her ignorance and the desire "to know and be known as deeply as possible"
        
        Sarah becomes a safe have for Prior, a place to belong amidst the civilian world. It is significant that Sarah begins to undress Prior and expose his nakedness- in the past, he's always been to one to initiate- which signals that she is proactively trying to see, know, and understand him though he playfully resists. It's also noteworthy that she gets stuck in the uniform's laces, suggesting that though she is working to lay him bare, to share the intimacy of knowing his pain, his persona of being a soldier and a stoic impedes her progress, though it certainly will not forever
  - - - Rivers recommends Burns for "unconditional discharge" from the military on account of his mental state. During the examining board, while other officials are interviewing Burns, Rivers sees a bee caught against a pane of glass
      - The bee operates as a brief but potent symbol for Burns, reflecting both the unusual level of care Rivers has for a seemingly insignificant being, as well as the gentle push to freedom he is giving Burns in hope that he will find some way to live out the rest of his life as best he can
    - - Rivers sets about analysing the dream, which feels pointedly self-accusatory. The deformed man seems to him to represent Sassoon and his declaration, but he wonders about the patient in the chair. When he realises that a bridle and bit are instruments of control, however, it begins to come together. In his treatment, Rivers is exerting control over individual lives, reforming them back to soldiers. Although psychiatric treatment is meant to stop self-destructive behaviour, nothing could be more self-destructive and even suicidal then returning to war
      - Again the bit functions as a symbol of the control Rivers tacitly exerts by coaxing soldiers' broken minds back to a functioning level so they can return to combat to fight again. This is a thematically critical moment in the novel's portrayal of mental illness and its treatment, suggesting that if mental breakdown is the mind's natural reaction to overwhelming stress and trauma, then a psychiatrist actually does a disservice by undoing those symptoms without changing the environment that produced them. Fixing a soldier's mind and then sending him straight back to combat seems only to be muting his mind's power to protest the horror and unsustainability of war
    - - Rivers sits at his desk and considers how strange that he, who changes minds for a living, should be changed by a patient, Sassoon, who was completely ignorant of the fact. Though Rivers has always been deeply conservative, "the sheer extent of mess" he's seem challenges that notion, and he considers that any country which so eagerly "devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance," and perhaps it is the old men who should be protesting, rather than the young
      - Barker ultimately condemns war, particularly war waged for unnecessary reasons, by arguing that the costs are too horrific and any country that willingly inflicts such suffering on its own people deserves nobody's loyalty. At the same time, Sassoon's desire for both death and belonging are both fulfilled, tragically suggesting that for both death and belonging are both fulfilled, tragically suggesting that for some as Sassoon, who has seen so much suffering that he feels there is nothing left for him in the civilian world, combat and the company of other fighters may be the only place he will feel he belongs
  - - - Sassoon sits at a table in the Conservative Club, waiting to meet Rivers for dinner. Though he is grateful to be away from Craiglockhart's cafeteria, the civilians rouse the predictable hatred in him, which this time seems to have a sexual element, as well
      - Yet again, the noel connects hatred (as a form of potential violence) with sex. Though the narrative does not explore this any further than merely mentioning it, this possibly suggests that masculinity, power and violence are so held together by society that there is an inherent violence in male sexuality. Sassoon's anger at himself suggests that he is plagued by guilt for sitting safely in Craiglockhart while others fight and die