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Rivers - Coggle Diagram
Rivers
"the two bloody bargains on which a civilization claims to be based... the inheritors were dying, not one by one..."
Through Rivers physical and emotional suffering, as he faces the turmoil of his duplicitous role, Barker provides a lens through which the audience realise the all encompassing nature of suffering as a result of generational gendered ideals.
Rivers visits church to try and atone for his complicity in a system which perpetuates such mass suffering. However, more subliminally, he is grappling for answers to existential questions about war and his dual role which cannot be answered by any authorities or systems in society. In this search for answers, the timeless nature of suffering under militant institutions of power is brought into sharper focus, as he realises that masculinity and patriotic glory are rooted in sacrifice both of self and life for patriotic gain.
The biblical allusion to the story of Abraham and Isaac reveals the timeless nature of suffering, interwoven into the very fabrics of society and maintained across generations
This extract is punctuated by the repetition of the lexis 'bargain', imbuing a sense of urgency into Barker's prose and calling into question the extent to which this bargain is fulfilled. Barker thus underscores the imbalanced power dynamics between authorities and soldiers which exacerbate the ubiqituos nature of suffering.
His function
Barker uses his emotional turmoil to reveal how the doctor patient relationship is imbued with the conscious repression of masculinity. Barker presents a striking irony- in order to heal these men must abandon their masculinity, which they see as their lifeline, only to internalise these once again when returning to war.
Rivers' moral regeneration is rooted in his discovery that the system in which he is complicit only serves to exacerbate suffering.
Signpost the need for empathy and morality in the system, evoking anger in Barker's audience for the mistreatment of suffering soldiers.
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"to let themselves feel the pity and terror their war experience inevitably evoked, he was excavating the ground he stood on."
Foundations of society are built upon years upon years of emotional repression in line with a desire to align with what it is to 'be a man'.
The present tense verb 'excavating' denotes the need for an ongoing moral regeneration in all aspects of society, as Rivers disillusionment with the system merely serves as a precursor to the breakdown of the system.
The extract that this comes from is punctuated with ideas of Rivers 'leading his patients' and 'advising his young patients', presenting him as a guiding figure and depicting his responsibility as a doctor specialising in war neurosis.
"he disliked the term 'male mother'....he distrusted the implication that nurturing, even when done by a man, remains female, as if the ability were in some way borrowed, or even stolen, from women."
Rivers fills this feminine void in war, providing a sense of security for his patients by allowing them to legitimise their more feminine emotions and in turn begin the process of regeneration.
The devolvement from the lexis 'borrowed' to 'stolen' is evocative of societies criminalisation of feminine emotion in war, assigning men delineated characters from which they cannot deviate without falling into disrepute. This is a core reason for mankind's inability to regenerate from war. Rivers is set in antithesis to this, he is a father figure for his patients and allows their regeneration because he fundamentally allows his men to blur the boundaries between genders and understands the need for both masculine and feminine traits.
The idea of him as a ‘male mother’, is this blurring of boundaries. Whilst Rivers may not like it, society is not ready to accept that fathers must nurture and protect their sons, so Rivers is seen as feminine because he is willing to stray from convention. Barker thus depicts how war innately demands a reversal of gender dynamics, due to the utter depravity it involves.
"he stared at the back of his neck, at the neck of the man whom he had, in a way, just killed, and he didn't feel sad or guilty about it all. he felt glad."
Rivers breaks away from paternal authority and marks his emotional and ethical independence from the authorities involved in war. He has become disillusioned from the generational cycle of masculinity which a war time society and its social conventions perpetuate.
Rivers reverses the generational cycle of deeply entrenched hyper masculine ideals and instead forms his own identity, allowing him to truly understand and comprehend his emotions.
Rivers too was a victim of his father’s stringent ideas on what it means to be masculine, yet by being in the system and by seeing firsthand the dangerous effects of this he has come to realise that masculine notions are fallible, they are only strengthened in the perception of others.
"a man's mouth open in front of him. he saw the moist, pink interior, the delicately quivering uvula, the yellowish, grainy surface of the tongue, and the tonsils" + "horse's bit"
This quote signifies Rivers guilt for his methods of treatment, and the dual nature of his role. The mouth represents protest and silencing, as Rivers realises that by training his soldiers to truly understand and accept their emotions, opening them to vulnerabilities they had never possessed before, and then sending them back to war, he effectively silences them.
Represents his guilt over silencing Sassoon's moral protest. By the end of the novel they have swapped roles, Sassoon has returned to war whilst Rivers is entirely disillusioned with the system he works within.
The horses bit represents silencing, but also control. Rivers recognises that in his methods of speech therapy, he essentially works in the business of controlling people.
"his body felt like a stone. rivers got hold of him and held him, coaxing, rocking.... nothing justifies this. nothing nothing nothing."
This moment is a turning point for Rivers, whereby he realises the utterly futile nature of mens suffering in war, justified and perpetuated by a corrupt militant authority. His moral regeneration causes the audience to carefully consider the institutions of power which they blindly trust, evoking pathos for a generation of men brutalised and rendered mere hollowed identities by war.
the lexical choices of 'coaxing' and 'rocking' act to present his more feminine side, where he acts as an almost maternal figure for Burns and allows him to find some semblance of comfort within the entirely overwhelming nature of his post war trauma.