Themes,
Symbols,
Motifs and
Illuminating
Quotes
15 March 2021
1
• Pat Barker wrote Regeneration in 1991.
• The novel depicts the effects of World War I on British officers and soldiers who are recovering
at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland.
• Set in 1917 and 1918, in the final years of the brutal conflict, Regeneration focuses on several
patients’ trauma, memories, and recovery.
• This novel represents a significant departure for Barker, whose early work focused primarily
on the lives of working-class women in the Northern England. Regeneration features many of
the same themes present in Barker’s first novels, like shifting gender roles, class tension, and
the effects of violence on the psyche. Widely acclaimed, Regeneration forms the first part of
Barker’s World War I trilogy; The Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995) complete
the series.
•
Regeneration
Overview
Regeneration can be classified as an historical novel, because it attempts to depict life in 1917
realistically, when WW1 was still at its height.
• Not only is it full of period detail, but it also features fictional versions of real people: the
psychiatrists W.H.R. Rivers and Lewis Yealland, the scientist Henry Head and the war poets
Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves. Many scenes in the novel are based on
actual incidents recorded by them in memoirs and letters.
• However, it can be difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in the novel as Regeneration also
includes straightforwardly invented characters e.g., the working-class officer Billy Prior and the
munitions worker Sarah Lumb.
• There are also figures who could be described as ‘historical extrapolations’ – mainly fictional,
but with a basis in fact e.g., Rivers’s patient David Burns and Yealland’s patient Callan, both of
whom appear as anonymous studies in the doctors’ case notes.
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• Barker’s choice of a First World War setting allows her to pursue her interest
in not just men, but masculinity – how the condition of ‘being a man’ is
socially and culturally understood.
• A central paradox throughout the novel is that war is meant to be THE manly
activity, but the conditions of this war, particularly in the trench system of the
Western Front in Belgium and France, emasculated many men.
• For Barker, this central idea is crystallised in the image of the shell-shocked
soldier, who becomes so mentally traumatised by enduring months, or years,
of fear and horror, that he breaks down and is unable to continue to fight.
Until WW1, hysteria was believed to be a female complaint, so this behaviour
could be viewed as ‘feminine’.
• By placing the setting in a trauma hospital, Barker brings the theme of
masculine crisis to the forefront or her text.
• Consequently, the novel features male characters who feel themselves to be,
one way or another, not ‘proper’ men, a concern which is most often
expressed through themes of sexual inadequacy or deviation.
Masculinity and
Emasculation
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• Several of the main characters – Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Own and Robert
Graves – are homosexual, while Rivers is celibate and rather sexless
(although there are strong suggestions that he might be attracted to men
rather than women).
• Only Billy Prior appears to have an active sex life with a female partner –
although, weakened by chronic asthma and plagued by nightmares, he still
believes he has somehow failed as a man.
• Regeneration can also be read as a text that tells a story often left out of official
accounts fo the First World War.
• Although male characters and experiences dominate the novel, Barker’s inclusion
of Sarah Lumb allows her to depict a female experience of the war.
• Sarah is a volunteer at a munitions factory; she and her friends are shown to be
taking full advantage of the money and independence their war work is bringing
them
• Perhaps shockingly, women such as these do not entirely regret the conflict but
see it as a time of opportunity and unaccustomed freedom.
• In this way, Barker ensures we see that our view of WW1 has been mainly
influenced by what men have written in history books and memoirs, as well as by
the poetry of Sassoon, Owen and Graves. Although these accounts are important
and used significantly in the book, they do not tell the whole story.
Other Impacts
of the War
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• What Regeneration is concerned with showing is that the First World War was an
event that changed everyone’s lives, whether they were male or female, working
or upper class, educated or not. It didn’t affect them all in the same way, nor was
its impact completely negative.
• Although the central theme of shell-shock reminds readers that this conflict
caused the death of hundreds of thousands of young men and ruined the lives of
thousands more, it also contributed towards the social liberalisation of women
and inspired many significant literary works.
• Regeneration can be said to situate itself within a pre-existing tradition of war
literature. The scenes between Sassoon and Owen depict it by Sassoon
nurturing Owen’s poetic talent and edits some of his early war poems.
• Barker explicitly draws upon some of the most important memoirs of the First
World War, such as Sassoon’s ‘Sherston’s Progress’ (1936) and Graves’s
‘Goodbye to All That’ (1929) in the writing of her own book.
• Is it a ‘war novel’? It is not set on the battlefields, nor does it contain any
detailed depictions of warfare. This is because Barker’s main interest is the
effects of war upon the minds of those who experienced it.
• Although none of the action actually takes place on the front line, Barker
constantly superimposes the landscape of conflict upon the memory of the
scenery of the home front, through both the recollections of the traumatised
soldiers whom Rivers is treating, and her references to the war poetry of Owen
and Sassoon.
Regeneration:
War Novel?
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• In this way, our definition of war as a definable, finite event is challenged,
since Regeneration’s portrayal of trauma forces us to think of war as something
that does not come to a close at the end of a battle.
• Those soldiers who have returned from the Front may have physically left the
battlefield, but their amnesia, nightmares, muteness, stammering and
paralysis dramatically indicate that they can’t leave the war behind as easily.
• Regeneration presents the reader with different stories
about the First World War and provides a constant
reminder of the suffering of those who survived.
Regeneration,
Reader and
Author
• Written in the early 1990s, a period in which there was a
growing awareness that direct experience of the First
World War was slipping away from living memory,
Regeneration, like other contemporary Great War novels,
can be regarded as a literary memorial to one of the most
devastating conflicts in history.
• As Barker says:
“it’s about a period of the world’s history that we have
never come to terms with. The Somme is like the Holocaust.
It revealed things about mankind that we cannot come to
terms with and cannot forget. It never becomes the past.”
(Candice Rodd, ‘A Stomach for War’, Independent on Sunday,
12 September 1993).
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The Order of Events
Synopsis
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Plot Summary (1)
Sassoon, Rivers and Traumatised Soldiers
• Regeneration opens with Siegfried Sassoon’s famous anti-war letter and then dives into the furore that the lieutenant’s protest
generated. The British military, worried about public opinion turning against a war for which there is no end in sight, mobilises to
undermine Sassoon’s critique.
• Graves, a fellow officer, poet and friend, convinces Sassoon that his protest will not result in the controversial court-martial he desires,
but in public embarrassment instead. Therefore, Sassoon agrees to be committed to Craiglockhart, a mental hospital, thus admitting
to a psychological break-down and effectively neutralising his critique.
• Sassoon’s treatment is entrusted to Dr. Rivers, an accomplished anthropologist and psychologist who champions remembering and
processing traumatic memories as form of treatment for shell-shock. The psychologist is impressed with Sassoon’s rational state of
mind and commitment to his beliefs, but warns that he is tasked with ensuring Sassoon's return to the Front.
• Dr. Rivers, like Graves, believes that soldiers have a duty to fight regardless of their opinions about the war. Though ostensibly sane,
Sassoon establishes a schedule for therapy with Dr. Rivers.
• Rivers treats an array of soldiers suffering the effects of war. During dinner, Sassoon meets Anderson, a combat medic who fears
blood. Their talk is interrupted by a skeletal man named Burns who can’t eat without vomiting. Burns was thrown by an explosion and
landed on the decomposing corpse of a German soldier; any time he attempts to eat, the taste and smell of rotting flesh come back to
him. Later, Billy Prior, a stubborn young officer with working-class roots, arrives at the hospital. He is suffering from mutism. In order
to cure these troubled soldiers, Dr. Rivers uses psychoanalysis, pushing his patients to speak about the memories that haunt them.
• As Rivers treats Prior, he gradually recovers his speech and immediately begins to taunt Dr. Rivers, refusing to recall the trauma that
left him mute in the first place. He repeatedly requests hypnosis, insisting that it is the only way he will recover the memory.
• Later, Burns walks through countryside and, in a surreal sequence, finds a tree with dead animals hanging from its boughs. Terrified,
he turns to run but forces himself to face his fears. He returns to the tree, removes the dead animals, and arranges them in a circle
around the trunk. Burns then peels off his clothes and lies down in the centre of the circle, thinking about death.
• Only his attachment to Dr. Rivers forces him to return to the hospital.
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Plot Summary (2)
The World Outside, Ongoing Trauma and Insight into More Impacts of the War
• Dr. Rivers realises that being forced to re-experience traumatic memories can cause his patients significant emotional
difficulty, which worries him. He dreams about the experiments he conducted at Cambridge with his friend Henry
Head. Head had voluntarily severed the nerve in his arm in order to chart its regeneration. Dr. Rivers would prick his
friend’s arm with a pin and measure the level of pain; Head often experienced unbelievable anguish. The psychologist is
disturbed by the thought of causing pain to both his friend and his patients, even in the name of recovery. Yet Dr.
Rivers believes in the power of his methods and concludes that he must continue his treatment.
• Sassoon becomes a friend and mentor to Wilfred Owen, another officer and aspiring poet who is star-struck when
he first meets the decorated lieutenant. A successful and published poet, Sassoon pushes Owen to write about his war
experiences and hone his craft. Over time, Owen's writing improves. He shows Sassoon a moving anti-war poem and
eventually agrees to publish his own work in the hospital literary magazine.
• Now allowed to leave the grounds, Billy Prior wanders through Edinburgh and enters a pub where he meets Sarah
Lumb, who works in a munitions factory. They drink heavily and end the evening kissing in a cemetery. Prior walks
Sarah home and agrees to meet the following Sunday. Unfortunately, he returns to Craiglockhart after curfew that night
and is prohibited from leaving the hospital grounds for the next two weeks. As soon as his punishment is over, Prior
visits Sarah, apologises profusely for his absence, and takes her to the seaside. During a sudden storm, Sarah and
Prior make love underneath a thicket of thorns. Afterwards, Prior is overwhelmed by the emotional attachment he feels
and purposely distances himself from Sarah
• Prior implores Rivers to hypnotise him to help him release his repressed memories of the war. Rivers agrees,
despite some scepticism. The hypnosis works, enabling Prior to remember his traumatic experiences on the battlefield.
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Plot Summary (3)
Discoveries
• Dr. Rivers agrees to Prior’s demands and uses hypnosis to recover his missing memories. Prior is then forced to
relive the exact moment that rendered him mute. Once the spell of hypnosis is broken, Prior is furious that the
memory is relatively ‘mundane’; he had seen many similarly gory scenes before that particular incident. Dr. Rivers
explains that shell-shock is not usually the consequence of one single event, but the result of repeated traumatic
incidents wearing a person down.
• Meanwhile, the stress of his work has taken its toll on Dr. Rivers. When he awakens one night with chest pain, his
supervisor, Bryce, insists that he take three weeks of sick leave. Dr. Rivers visits his brother in the countryside,
attending church, helping with the family chicken farm, and mulling over his relationship with his late father. Afterwards,
he visits Henry Head, his friend from Cambridge, who offers him a prestigious post studying shell-shock in a London
hospital. Dr. Rivers promises to consider it but is reticent to leave Craiglockhart.
• While he is still on leave, Dr. Rivers travels to visit Burns, who has been granted permanent home leave and is living
in his parents' empty seaside cottage. Burns has repressed all of his memories of the war and Dr. Rivers is hesitant to
make him remember, despite his firm belief in his methods.
• One night during a storm, Burns flees the house and hides in the cellar of a lighthouse that floods completely at high
tide. Dr. Rivers finds Burns and saves him before the tide comes in, realising that no military responsibility or
code of honour can justify Burns's extreme anguish.
• Dr. Rivers discovers that Billy Prior has asthma after the young officer suffers a severe attack. Rivers forces Prior to
see a specialist, despite his patient's protests. When the board reviews Prior's file, they grant him permanent home
service as a result of his asthma. Prior is devastated that he will not have the opportunity to prove himself on the
battlefield but is also relieved that he will no longer have to face imminent death.
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New Beginnings
Plot Summary (4)
• Sarah and Billy declare their love for each other, although Sarah is uncertain about her personal future.
• Wracked by guilt and haunted by the apparition of a dead friend from the war, Sassoon decides he must return to
France. His protest has failed, effectively neutered by his stay at Craiglockhart; if he cannot help end the war,
Sassoon feels duty-bound to return to the battlefields.
• However, Sassoon’s thoughts about the war and inclinations towards pacifism have in reality hardened through his
experiences at Craiglockhart. Dr. Rivers is confused but relieved by Sassoon's decision.
• Encouraged by Bryce, Dr. Rivers accepts the new position in London. The city has grown darker with the war and
is oppressed by constant air raids. Rivers reluctantly accepts an invitation to visit, Dr. Yealland, a fellow psychologist,
and witness his treatment methods. Dr. Yealland turns out to be a cruel and sadistic man who takes delight in
shocking his patients into submission. He believes that all illnesses are physical and neglects the emotional state of his
patients entirely. Horrified, Dr. Rivers returns home where he dreams that he is in Dr. Yealland’s clinic, shoving an
electrode and then a horse-bit into the mouth of a terrified man. After waking, Dr. Rivers realises the man he was
torturing was Sassoon.
• Dr. Rivers returns to Craiglockhart for Anderson and Sassoon’s review boards. Anderson is granted an
administrative position with the War Office, saving him from returning to the blood of the battlefield or a civilian medical
practice. Sassoon is discharged to duty in France, despite his refusal to retract his statements about the war.
•
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Dr. Rivers and Sassoon exchange an awkward but warm farewell. Later, Rivers considers how Sassoon has
transformed his own opinion of the war. He concludes that no government who would sacrifice its children so
wantonly deserves automatic allegiance.
Messages and Undercurrents
Themes
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Possible Themes in Regeneration
Theme
Speech and Silence
•
•
•
•
Sassoon’s political stance
Prior (literal silence)
Rivers encouraging speech/emotions
Poetry
Evidence/Effects
•
•
•
•
Craiglockhart
Ties into masculinity and emotion-sharing
Owen’s speech issues/Sassoon’s mentoring
Freedom of speech and expression
• Holding on to masculinity
• Homosexuality
• Prior’s fear of emasculation/unable to fight
• Increasing importance in society
• Sarah Lumb acts as a conduit for women’s
liberalisation.
• Rivers as father-figure in current context
• Anderson’s father controlling, mother warm
• Rivers’ father and Anderson’s represent paternal
stereotypes in context of 1917
• Nerve-regeneration (literal)
• Regeneration of self (spiritual & physical)
• Yealland and Rivers’ contradictory practises
• Central theme of the novel
• This ties every character together
• Central theme of the novel.
• Burns and Trees.
Duty
• Massive sense of returning the men back to war
• War seen as duty – personal, moral, guilt, military
Trauma
• Ties in with sanity – the root of it in the minds of
the people in this book.
• Demonstrated by each person’s symptoms.
• Cause/effect.
• Rivers and impact Sassoon had on him
• Rivers’ paradox
• Sassoon’s cause
• Expressed through poetry
• “No government should sacrifice its children.”
• Barker’s aim to show that war is not finite
• Dr. yealland
Masculinity
Changing Role of Women
Fathers
Regeneration
Sanity
Conscience and Principle
Absurdity of War
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Initial Thoughts
EXAMPLE Theme Analysis: Speech and Silence
Theme
Analysis (Based on Events)
Effects, Evidence, Impressions
Speech
and
Silence
• Sassoon’s Declaration text ‘published’ at the start of the novel indicates a theme of protest.
• It is immediately followed by a clear exposition that the authorities wish to silence his view in the
discussion between Dr. Rivers and Bryce.
• Dr. Rivers’s role is to assess the state of Sassoon’s mind to decide whether he is shell-shocked or fit to
return to the Front.
• The treatment Dr. Rivers advocates and specialises in is known as the ‘talking cure’. The novel
features numerous instances of this technique in action.
• Rivers himself remains silent through his sessions.
• Rivers prides himself on enabling his patients to unburden themselves and speak freely but his role
with Sassoon makes him question whether he’s actually censoring their ability to say anything
meaningful.
• Many characters suffer from speaking difficulties – Owen stammers, Billy Prior is mute initially;
Yealland’s patient Callan is also ‘dumb’.
• The shell-shock victim’s body takes on a disturbing power of expression to communicate its protest
in a variety of non-verbal ways.
• When Rivers witnesses Lewis Yealland’s treatment of Callan, he sees a dramatic demonstration of
the paradox of silencing a man by the very process of returning his speech to him (Yealland says
Callan’s protests won’t be heard by anyone).
• Rivers himself knows about being silenced. His speech-therapist father spent years trying to correct
his son’s chronic stutter, yet was never interested in meaning behind the words.
• At the end of the novel, there’s a strong sense that Rivers has been silenced again: he can do nothing
but sign the form passing Sassoon fit for active service.
• An individual doesn’t have to be silenced literally to be
prevented from speaking.
• Sassoon is a pacifist with a personal agenda.
• Mental health and outspoken views inextricably linked or
matters of convenience?
• Whatever treatment is received, if the men recover, they
WILL be sent back to fight – a sense of helplessness
against the ‘powers that be.’
• Ironic that Rivers’s therapy = talking.
• Billy Prior describes Rivers as acting like “a strip of
empathetic wallpaper.”
• Silence can be as eloquent as speech in Regeneration.
• Rivers observes: “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. So
you resolve it by making it physically impossible for
yourself to speak and knowing what you’ve got to say is
acceptable.”
• ‘Owen…would have given anything to say one sentence
without stammering.’ (Intimidated by meeting Sassoon).
• Return of speech (Billy Prior) indicates a mix of
recovery/personal power vs. rebellion against war.
• ‘Just as Yealland silenced the unconscious protest of his
patients by removing the paralysis, the deafness, the
blindness, the muteness that stood between them and
the war, so, in an infinitely more gentle way, he silenced
his patients; for the stammerings, the nightmares, the
tremors, the memory lapses, of officers were just as
much unwitting protests as this grosser maladies of the
men.”
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Messages and Undercurrents
Symbols, Motifs
and Allegories
15
Possible Symbols, Motifs and Allegories
Symbol or Motif
Mud (Trenches)
Burns and the Tree
Emasculation
Healing and Change
Class, Snobbery
Alienation
Romance
Horse’s Bit
“Old Men”
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Yellow
Symbol or Motif/Metaphor?
Effects on the Text/Reader
EXAMPLE: Symbols Analysis
Symbol or Motif
Effects on the Text/Reader
• WWI was fought from trenches: deep, winding
excavations in the earth the soldiers on both sides
lived in and emerged from to fight the enemy.
• As deep furrows in the ground, trenches are
symbolic of graves.
• In fact, they were graves for countless soldiers
who died in them—from bombs and diseases that
ran rampant in the trenches. Life in the rat-and
insect-infested trenches was so harrowing it
continued to haunt the soldiers at the hospital.
• In the novel, some soldiers being treated walk in,
fall in, or are otherwise covered in mud.
• Mud represents death for soldiers in WW1. It
covered the continually bombarded "no-man's
land" between the trenches of opposing armies,
where thousands died going ‘over the top’.
“Old Men”
N.B. great comparison vehicle
• In various parts of the text characters express
sneering contempt or vicious hatred for the
powerful "old men" who started and perpetuate
the war. These "old men" symbolise the narrow
self-interest, mindless and anachronistic pseudopatriotism and callous indifference of the
powerful to the suffering of soldiers at the front.
• In this context the "old men" are the politicians,
businessmen, and military bigwigs who sent
hundreds of thousands of Britain's young men to
fight the war and are seen as ignorant and
uncaring of the suffering of the troops. "Old men"
therefore symbolise the wilful ignorance and
indifference of the powerful men safe at home, in
stark comparison to the unimaginable suffering of
soldiers in combat.
Horse’s Bit
• A horse's bit represents control. At the end of the
novel, Dr. Rivers has a nightmare in which he's
trying to force a horse's bit into the mouth of a
restrained soldier/patient.
• When he awakes, Rivers understands the
symbolism of his dream (the patient is Sassoon).
• Almost literally reflecting Yealland’s methods
(electrode on tongue)
• In the context of Rivers's dream, the horse's bit
represents an inhuman, even torturous, means of
controlling soldiers.
• Rivers's recognition of his complicity in controlling
mentally wounded soldiers to get them back to
the front as quickly as possible is a turning point
for him in the novel when he realises that he is as
bad as the “old men” in manipulating and
controlling truth vs. the harsh realities of this war.
Mud (Trenches)
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Analysis
EXAMPLE: Motifs and Allegories Analysis
Symbol or Motif
Analysis
Effects on the Text/Reader
Burns and the Tree
• Burns’s encounter with a tree hung with animal
carcasses is one of the most powerful scenes in
the novel.
• Barker gives us a vivid encapsulation of the
terrible fear and confusion felt and experienced
by soldiers like Burns.
• Barker describes his pale body as “white as a
root,” reflecting Burns’s desire to join the animals
in the earth – but he overcomes his fears.
• Barker uses vivid imagery to evoke a dream-like
tone; her language enhances the surreal nature
of the moment, describing dead animals hanging
from boughs as looking “like fruit”.
• As Burns attempts to flee, the vegetation “turns
against him,” “tripping” and “tearing” at him like a
scene from a nightmare. When Burns returns to
face the tree, he arranges the dead animals in a
circle and lies down in the centre.
Emasculation
• Loss of manhood or ‘manliness’, recurs.
• Some soldiers suffer physical emasculation from
wounds to the groin. In most cases, the
emasculation explored revolves around the loss of
power to act on one's own behalf.
• The motif of emasculation is strongly tied into its
corresponding issues of emotion, caring,
conscience, sexual identity, and sacrifice.
• The soldiers in the hospital are under the
complete control of the doctors and nurses, who
are themselves controlled by the military.
• The soldiers are powerless, which itself is seen by
them as a type of emasculation, exacerbated by
British society's notions of manhood: fighting is
manly; being wounded—physically or mentally—
and unable to fight is unmanly.
• Even though the soldiers' wounds come from their
service to their country, they are made to feel less
than men if they can no longer fight.
• Ada Lumb’s harsh views of romantic love stem
from a lifetime of abandonment, abuse, and
suffering. Ada's description of romance engenders
feelings of danger and disgust v intimacy and love.
• Sarah ultimately rejects her mother’s morbid
views and pursues a romantic relationship with
Billy Prior, but she admits that her mother's
perspective has affected her.
• “In her world, men loved women as the fox loves
the hare. And women loved men as the
tapeworm loves the gut.” Barker uses this simile
to outline Ada's harsh view of romance where
humans are animals: males are predatory and
females are dependent. For her, partnerships are
about satiating a man's sexual needs and a
woman's desire for financial dependence.
Power and Weakness
Romance
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Explicit and Implicit Messages
Quotes
19
Key Quotes and Meanings
Quote/Character
"The way I see it, when you put the uniform
on, in effect you sign a contract. And you
don't back out of a contract merely because
you've changed your mind.“ Graves.
"They seemed to have changed so much
during the war, to have expanded in all kinds
of ways, whereas men over the same period
had shrunk into a smaller and smaller space.“
"She belonged with the pleasure-seeking
crowds. He both envied and despised her,
and was quite coldly determined to get her.
They owed him something, all of them, and
she should pay.”
Billy Prior.
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Theme
Duty
Women’s
Changing
Roles and
their Impact
Analysis
• Graves explains to Dr. Rivers how he is able to agree with Sassoon’s assessment of the war but
disagree with his protest. He invokes a sense of duty and honour that revolves around
institutional loyalty and the power of an individual’s commitment.
• This understanding of duty departs from Sassoon’s own, although he feels a stronger sense of
loyalty to his fellow soldiers. In his mind, his responsibility to stop the needless slaughter
comes before his responsibility to fulfil his job.
• Ultimately, the novel vindicates Sassoon’s conception of duty when Dr. Rivers, the primary
protagonist, comes to adopt Sassoon's perspective at the end of the novel even though
Sassoon himself has returned to fight.
• Prior reflects on the ways in which women have changed since the war broke out several years
ago. The war-time shortage of male labour has allowed women to step into traditionally
masculine roles. Prior’s girlfriend, Sarah, is a worker at a munitions factory, where she makes
much more money than previously.
• When he first meets Sarah, she and her co-workers drink, talk loudly, approach men, have premarital sex and stay out late.
• Meanwhile, the war has increasingly forced men into a single role: that of the soldier.
Key Quotes and Meanings
Quote/Character
"The war that had promised so much in the
way of ‘manly’ activity had actually delivered
‘feminine’ passivity, and on a scale that their
mothers and sisters had scarcely known. No
wonder they broke down.“ Dr. Rivers
"The bargain…If you, who are young and strong,
will obey me, who am old and weak, even to the
extent of being prepared to sacrifice your life,
then in the course of time you will peacefully
inherit, and be able to exact the same obedience
from your sons. Only we’re breaking the
bargain”, Rivers thought. “All over northern
France, at this very moment, in trenches and
dugouts and flooded shell-holes, the inheritors
were dying, not one by one, while old men, and
women of all ages, gathered together and sang
hymns.“ Dr. Rivers
21
Theme
Emasculation
Old Men vs.
Young Men
Responsibility
Analysis
• Dr. Rivers compares war neuroses to the hysteria that often were perceived to affect women.
• The trenches have rendered men helpless, while strictly proscribed social roles have had the
same effect on women.
• In both cases, these prolonged feelings of forced vulnerability play a large role in triggering
neuroses about emasculation and what that means for everyone.
• The quote appears at the beginning of Part III of the novel, during which the psychologist’s
opinions on duty, war, and protest start to transform.
• Here, Dr. Rivers suspects that the "bargain" is no longer fair and that it is not in the young
men’s best interest to adhere to it any longer.
Key Quotes and Meanings
Quote/Character
"Nothing justifies this. Nothing nothing
nothing.“
"And suddenly I saw not only that we
weren’t the measure of all things, but that
there was no measure.“
Dr. Rivers
"A horse’s bit. Not an electrode, not a teaspoon.
A bit. And instrument of control. Obviously he
and Yealland were both in the business of
controlling people.“ Dr. Rivers
22
Theme
Conscience
and Principle
Horse’s Bit
Analysis
• When he finds Burns waiting to drown in the darkened cellar of a lighthouse, Dr. Rivers finally
accepts the injustices of the war. Burns’s suffering has no redeeming quality; his wartime
experience has stripped him of honour and dignity.
• Acknowledging the depth of Burns’ anguish leads Rivers to conclude, as Sassoon has, that the
political reasons for the war cannot justify the damage it has caused.
• This revelation proves problematic for the psychologist, who has been tasked with mentally
preparing his patients for return to the battlefield.
• Once Rivers concludes that the war is not worth the human cost, the irony of his task becomes
that much more apparent, through to the end of the text.
• After witnessing Dr. Yealland’s disturbing electroshock treatment, Dr. Rivers dreams that he is
in his colleague’s place, forcing an electrode and then a horse’s bit into a patient’s mouth.
• His anxiety is connected to one patient in particular: Sassoon. In his dream, he is attempting to
bridle and direct Sassoon in his Lieutenant’s uniform, subconsciously expressing his guilt over
the role he has played in Sassoon’s decision to return to battlefield.
Key Quotes and Meanings
Quote/Character
"You must speak, but I shall not listen to
anything you have to say.“ Dr. Yealland.
"You can make me dredge up the horrors ... but
you will never make me feel” Billy Prior.
‘The Great Adventure ... consisted of crouching in
a dugout, waiting to be killed.’ Narrator (Rivers).
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Theme
Speech and
Silence
Trauma
Absurdity of
War
Analysis
• Dr. Yealland orders Callan to speak but makes it clear that he is not interested in his patient's
thoughts.
• Dr. Rivers notes that Callan’s silence is an extremely effective form of protest: by refusing to
speak, the soldier communicates his condemnation of the war and the system that
perpetuates it more profoundly than had he said it.
• When Yealland uses electroshock therapy for Callan to speak, he is, ironically, silencing him.
• Billy is closed-off, self-protective, and adamantly opposed to sharing his war experiences with
Rivers. Prior says even if he describes his trauma, he will never allow himself to feel the
emotion that accompanies it.
• Prior shuts himself off from feeling to protect his sanity; he's also afraid of revisiting the
intensity of his repressed emotions.
• These are Rivers’s (and the writer’s) cynical thoughts on the idealised image of war. The British
military attracts young men into the army by painting the war as a Great Adventure.
• Rivers notes that the reality is completely different.
• Soldiers spend most of their time miserably in foul, crowded trenches that often serve as
death-traps and Rivers sees the impact of this on their minds, directly.
Structure, Context, Life
Characters
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Character
Commentary/Overview
Dr. W.H.R. Rivers*
The protagonist of the novel and a practicing psychiatrist at Craiglockhart War Hospital. Originally an anthropologist, Dr. Rivers has spent much of
his life studying the culture and customs of man. As a psychiatrist, he is a sensitive doctor who cares about his patients immensely. Though he is
dedicated to doing his duty by healing the men so that they may return to fight, Rivers feels conflicted about the amount of control and influence
he has over his patients as well as the moral questions posed by returning them back to the War which has caused them so much trauma.
Sassoon has a profound effect on him.
Siegfried Sassoon*
In real life, a distinguished soldier and Great War poet. In the novel, Sassoon is both of these things. He is depicted as being truthful, selfconfident, morally upright, slightly arrogant. Though he strongly opposes the War (he is a pacifist), Sassoon has not experienced a breakdown,
and he feels uncomfortable around the other patients in the hospital. His controversial anti-war Declaration is the reason he is there. He looks to
Rivers as a father figure and becomes a mentor to Wilfred Owen. In the end, Sassoon returns to his duty, though he maintains his belief that the
War is wrong
Billy Prior*
Fictional character with several purposes. An initially difficult patient with a bad attitude who suffers from mutism and severe asthma, Prior is a
complicated character; though he is difficult towards the staff, he truly wants to get better. He challenges Rivers to apply some analysis to himself
by turning the doctor's questions back around on him. As a young man from the working class who has risen to the rank of officer, Prior tackles
issues of social class. Above all, he is conflicted, torn between wanting to return to France to prove himself as a soldier and a man, or avoiding
death and living with newfound love, Sarah.
David Burns*
Wilfred Owen*
Anderson
Sarah Lumb*
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A patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital who has been unable to eat since a bomb threw him into the body of a gas-filled German cadaver. The
emaciated Burns remains silent about his problems. Always aware of others, he does not want to bother anyone with his story. He rose to the
rank of officer at a very young age, but he is only a shell of the man he once was. Rivers thinks of Burns as a "fossilised schoolboy.“ He plays a
pivotal role in Rivers’ changing attitude to the War.
In real life, with Sassoon, the most famous of the Great War poets, dying in 1918 just before the end of the war. In the novel, Owen is depicted as
a young man still unsure of himself and his work, though his confidence is growing. A closeted homosexual, he seems to develop a crush on
Sassoon. Owen is deeply affected by the War, and he works to express it in his own words, encouraged by Sassoon.
A patient in Craiglockhart War Hospital who was formerly a war surgeon but who has had a mental breakdown and is now unable to bear the
sight of blood. Anderson doubts that he will ever be able to once again practice civilian medicine. Once a strong, self-assured man, he is now
reduced to a childlike state.
The girlfriend of Billy Prior. Sarah is a young, working-class woman who works in a munitions factory in Scotland. Like her mother, she is very
practical. She is unsure that true love between a man and a woman is possible, but she is willing to give it a try. As a woman, Sarah has been
shielded from many of the horrors of the War. Nevertheless, she is angered by a society which sends its sons out to be killed and then refuses to
face the consequences.
Character
Commentary/Overview
Ada Lumb
Mother of Sarah Lumb. Ada is a practical woman who doesn’t believe in romantic love. She desires nothing more than for her daughters to be the
beneficiaries of a stable pension from their deceased husbands. Ada is very involved in her daughter's life and cautions Sarah about the risks of
pregnancy. Ada is toughened by the reality of raising two daughters alone in a time when women did not make much money independently.
Dr. Lewis Yealland*
A doctor at the National Hospital in London who uses electro-shock therapy to treat his patients. Dr. Yealland is arrogant and tends to try to play
God, believing any problem can be cured in one therapy session. Rivers notes (and is disturbed by) Yealland's need to exert control over others.
Callan
Dr. Yealland's patient at the National Hospital in London and one of his more interesting cases. After serving in almost every major battle of the
First World War, Callan finds himself in the hospital suffering from mutism. He seems insolent in his illness, merely smiling at the doctor who offers
to cure him. Callan initially fights against the treatment, but eventually resigns himself to it. Rivers notes that Callan appears broken.
Robert Graves
Fellow poet and soldier and good friend of Sassoon. Although Graves agrees with Sassoon that the War is evil and unjust, he refuses to protest.
Graves feels that regardless of his personal beliefs, it is his duty to honour his contract to his country. Sassoon thinks Graves is hypocritical.
Nevertheless, Graves is a true friend to Sassoon; he always tries to do what is best for his friend, even if he does not help Sassoon’s personal cause.
Willard
A patient who comes to Craiglockhart relatively late in the novel. Although there is nothing physically wrong with his spine, Willard is paralysed
from the waist down, but refuses to believe he is suffering from any psychological trauma. Willard quickly grows frustrated by his feelings of
powerlessness, but by the end of the novel he recovers his ability to walk.
Henry Head
An old friend of Rivers from their days at Cambridge. Like Rivers, Head is now a practicing psychiatrist. At Cambridge, the two men worked together
on research charting nerve regeneration in the arm and hand. Head is a dedicated scientist who believes strongly in the merits of his research, and
is a good friend to Rivers.
Bryce
Another psychiatrist at Craiglockhart War Hospital, Rivers's boss and close friend. Bryce is a sympathetic, affable man who believes in the benefits
of psychotherapy. His character is not very developed in the novel, but he serves as a participant in dialogue.
The Priors
Billy Prior's parents. Mr. and Mrs. Prior are extraordinarily different from each other, both in personality and in relation to their son. Mrs. Prior is a
nervous woman who always protected her son to the point of making him more sensitive than was socially accepted at the time. She wants him to
achieve in life and ascend up the social ladder. Mr. Prior, in contrast, is a rough, working-class man who believes that his son must grow up the hard
way, as befits a real man of his background. He believes it is presumptuous and wrong for Billy to reach beyond his class and station.
26 Lizzie
Friend of Sarah Lumb and fellow worker in the munitions factory in Scotland. Her husband abuses her, so she is happy that the War has given her
the freedom to work and be separated from him while he is away. Lizzie is very blunt, using frank language and always telling it like it is.
Minor Characters
Character
Featherstone
Fothersgill
Major Huntley
John Layard
Peter
Commentary/Overview
Featherstone is Prior's sleep-deprived roommate at Craiglockhart War Hospital.
Fothersgill is Sassoon's roommate at Craiglockhart War Hospital. He is a religious fanatic who talks as if he's from
the Middle Ages.
Major Huntley is an openly bigoted Board member at Craiglockhart War Hospital.
John Layard is one of Rivers's former patients; Rivers sees similarities with Billy Prior.
Peter, a soldier acquainted with both Graves and Sassoon, is arrested for soliciting male sex near a barracks and
must undergo psychiatric treatment as a result (homosexuality viewed as a psychological illness by many at the
time). Like Sassoon, he is not at the hospital for issues caused by the War itself.
Pugh, Thorpe
Pugh is a patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital who is severely mentally wounded because of a grenade accident
that killed everyone else in his platoon. Thorpe is a patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital whose war traumas have
left him with a severe stutter. Pugh and Thorpe offer additional perspectives on war trauma.
Betty, Madge
Betty is one of Sarah Lumb's co-workers at the munitions factory. After she gets pregnant, she tries to abort the
baby with a coat hanger. Madge is also a co-worker at the munitions factory. Betty and Madge’s role is to be part of
their social group through dialogue and context.
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• As the protagonist of Regeneration, Rivers is the central character. The story continually returns to
descriptions of his experiences and emotions, but he also plays an important unifying function
within the novel.
Dr. W.H.R. Rivers
• For the most part, Rivers is the figure around which all the other characters revolve. Regeneration
features a wide-ranging group of characters, many of whom never interact with each other in the
course of the narrative, with Rivers as the sole connecting factor e.g., Sassoon doesn’t know Billy
Prior and Henry Head never meets any Craiglockhart patients. He is usually seen as a father figure.
• Only a few relationships develop outside his sphere of influence i.e., Billy Prior and Sarah Lumb/her
personal environment, also Sassoon and Owen’s discussions over poetry.
• Rivers is also the most mobile character in the novel. His period of leave in the second half provides
relief from the claustrophobic setting of Craiglockhart, introducing the reader to other characters
and places in the context of the Home Front.
• Barker also ensures we’re reminded that Rivers was previously a well-travelled anthropologist,
which features in his memories of Melanesia and the influence these experiences had on him. This
counterbalances his honorary military rank, with no direct experience of warfare or the Front.
• In the novel, Rivers is a dynamic character who develops and changes throughout the text. He feels a
deep conflict between patriotic duty and personal honour and integrity, together with their
presentation of masculinity in crisis.
• He begins the novel believing War “must be fought to a finish, for the sake of the succeeding
generations”, but as he continues to witness its terrible effects on minds and bodies of the men who
fight it, his view changes; David Burns and Sassoon are pivotal influences. Rivers watches Burns’
‘…how much easier his life would have been if
horrific suffering in helpless sympathy, while Sassoon engages his rational sense of morality.
they’d sent Siegfried somewhere else.’
‘All over northern France, at this very moment, in •
trenches and dugouts and flooded shell-holes,
the inheritors were dying, not one by one, while
old men, and women of all ages, gathered
together and sang hymns.’
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Rivers’ growing friendship with Sassoon is a central aspect of the novel: a) its part in changing his
opinions b) enables Barker to hin at his sexual orientation, thus linking to the novel’s interest in
masculinity and homosexuality. Rivers appears to be rather sexless – never married, no significant
relationships mentioned. But his tolerant attitude to homosexuals was unusual in context.
Dr. Rivers:
Father-Figure
• Rivers often adopts the role of father-figure to the men under his care and examples of his
compassion are numerous.
• Throughout Regeneration he is shown putting his patients’ concerns before his own, exhausting
himself to the point of physical breakdown.
• His fatherly persona is also problematic – Rivers himself is the main character through whom his
own father is heavily criticised. This is highlighted through Barker’s description of Rivers’
relationship with his speech-therapist father, a very strict authority figure. His own persistent
stammer, a life-long affliction, comes to represent his personal rebellion against his father, who,
despite his profession, was unsuccessful in treating hs own son.
• Rivers is therefore presented as both a rebellious son and a father-figure, who, however reluctantly,
forces (or compels) obedience from others – an uncomfortable combination.
• The tension between the two roles is maintained right up to the end of the novel, when Rivers
certifies Sassoon fit to return to active service.
‘The war that had promised so much in the
way of ‘manly’ activity had actually delivered
‘feminine’ passivity, and on a scale that their
mothers and sisters had scarcely known. No
wonder they broke down.’
• Although he has come to see himself as rebelling against the military machine, forced ‘into conflict
with the authorities over a very wide range of issues’, he nevertheless writes the final report that
confirms he has done his job and brought Sassoon’s public protest to an end.
• Barker’s portrayal of Rivers is overwhelmingly positive. He is insightful, kind, humorous and
surprisingly open-minded.
• Having said that, his encounters with working-class officer Billy Prior reveal his prejudices regarding
social class are rather deeply ingrained.
• Even Rivers’ inconsistencies are dealt with sympathetically, encouraging us to see him as an
essentially good man caught up in the dilemmas of a particularly difficult period in British history.
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• In Regeneration, Siegfried Sassoon conforms most easily to the conventional role of hero. Barker
makes several references to his height and good looks, which is unusual in a novel more concerned
with internal states than external appearance. On his train journey to Craiglockhart, we are told he
attracts ‘admiring glances’ from his fellow travellers – ‘and not only from the women.’ At his final
Medical Board, one officer is openly impressed with his ‘physique’.
• Upper-class and well-connected, Sassoon is also highly intelligent and honourable – the very
attributes which led him to embark on his controversial anti-War protest.
• However, although Sassoon appears to be and in many ways is, an exemplary soldier-poet, he is also
as flawed and contradictory as many of the other characters in Regeneration.
• His German first name and Jewish family name compromise his status as an officer and gentleman,
just as his Declaration is a surprising departure from his previously unblemished military record.
Whilst no-one doubts his best intentions, he has little grasp of the intricacies of his situation. He may
be an eloquent poet, but Barker does not portray him as a particularly deep thinker.
• Rivers regards Sassoon as a man who has ‘so many good qualities’, while also possessing a ‘selfabsorption’ that is ‘remarkable’.
• This is also evident in Sassoon’s attitude towards his homosexuality. His honesty is admirable, but he
refuses to copy the example of his friend Robert Ross, who opposes the War privately to gain attention
from the authorities. He openly admits to Rivers that it was when he read Carpenter’s book The
Intermediate Sex that he realised he “wasn’t just a freak” who “didn’t seem able to feel…well. Any of
the things you were supposed to feel.” He argues that just because “I have to conform in one area of
life” it doesn’t mean “I have to conform in the others”.
• Towards the end of the novel, the narrative viewpoint withdraws from Sassoon, which leaves the
reader relying on the accuracy of Rivers’ impression that Sassoon’s decision to return to active service
‘No doubt, no scruples, no agonizing,
(while still maintaining his belief that it is immoral), will deepen rather than solve his dilemmas.
just a straightforward, healing retreat
towards the Front.’
• It is clear, however, that Sassoon, ever the man of action over reflection, regards the battlefield as a
place to escape all the complexities of his current situation…see caption.
Siegfried Sassoon
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Billy Prior
• Billy Prior is the novel’s only principal character who is entirely fictional, plus he provides an
important point of contrast to the other masculine figures in the book.
• Barker herself indicated that his real significance is to “bring out certain facets of Rivers’ character
that I couldn’t bring out through Sassoon or any of the others. I needed someone basically to be fairly
antagonistic to Rivers.” (Donna Perry, Backtalk: Women Writers Speak Out, 1993, pp 52-3)
• Prior is never depicted interacting with anyone at Craiglockhart except Rivers and their conversations
are consistently tense and combative. Prior delights in shocking Rivers and his resistance to authority
and constant questioning often make Rivers uneasy.
• It is a testimony to his skill as a therapist that Prior is successfully cured of his amnesia and mutism,
but his return to active service is prohibited due to his worsening asthma.
• Prior’s combative attitude is shown to originate from his awareness that he’s an outsider at
Craiglockhart due to his background/origins. He is an army officer but unlike other patients, he is
working-class, not middle or upper. Instead, he is known as what was referred to as a ‘temporary
gentleman’ i.e., someone from a lower class promoted to officer rank.
‘”You can make me dredge up the
• Prior is mute when he first arrives, but once he recovers the power of speech, the first thing Rivers
notices is his northern accent: ‘not ungrammatical, but with the vowel sounds distinctly flattened.’ For
Rivers, this has ‘the curious effect of making him look different. Thinner, more defensive. And, at the
same time, a lot tougher.’
horrors ... but you will never make • This both accentuates Rivers’ class prejudice and reminds the reader that Prior’s position is intended
to stand out as an oddity in context. Barker argues this makes him identifiable for the reader: “His
me feel.”
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perspective is our perspective because it’s the perspective of the outsider – in class, in sexuality and in
temperament.” (Mark Sinker, Temporary Gentlemen, 1997, Sight and Sound, p24).
Billy Prior
Distinctly Different
• River’s conversations with Priors’ parents reveal that, handicapped by his asthma, he has had to struggle for everything
that he has gained in life. His mother’s desire for Billy to “better” himself led him to becoming alienated from his own
background, even before the War – much to his rough, working-class father’s disgust and outrage. In Chapter 6, we learn
that Prior’s mother felt her asthmatic son should be protected from the hardships of working-class life. Billy is stranded
across the class divide (and parental) and he can’t quite forgive his mother for it.
• As Prior admits in his final conversation with Rivers before he leaves Craiglockhart, he has transferred his hostility onto
Rivers, who represents both the system which will always see him as different and his mother’s role as the figure which
forces him to remain on the outside.
• Billy comes to regard Rivers’ decision that his asthma precludes him from returning to the Front as similarly restrictive to
his mother’s insistence on his ‘betterment’. He wants to be part of the rough and tumble of an overtly masculine
community. For Prior, active service is his way to prove his own resilience and manliness and to gain a social acceptance
not otherwise available to him. He bitterly resents being prevented from returning to the Front.
• Prior is also distinctive as the only male figure in the novel who is actively heterosexual. His relationship with Sarah
Lumb, starting as a casual affair and ending with a mutual declaration of love, is unique in contrast to other male
characters who express deep anxieties about their sexuality, with connotations of emasculation and powerlessness.
Prior, in contrast, has no problems finding sex freely available when he wants it: as he says to Rivers, “I don’t pay”.
• Prior often jokes about sexuality in his sessions with Rivers. He uses juvenile sexual innuendo to shock and provoke
reactions from Rivers, but also to avoid facing his deeper fears about his war experiences. It also shows his unsettling
tendency to equate sex with aggression, which is sometime evident in his exchanges with Sarah.
‘…not ungrammatical, but
with the vowel sounds
distinctly flattened.’
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• Barker stresses Prior’s intelligence throughout the narrative. Unlike Sassoon, he possesses insight which is symbolically
indicated by his association with the image of the eye. When he finally recalls the traumatic event that triggered his
breakdown – picking up an eyeball and resting it on the palm of his hand – Prior not only regains his memory but also
becomes associated with the concept of vision in the broadest sense. He demonstrates his ability to move between a
variety of different viewpoints and ‘see’ both sides.
• Because of his differences to the other characters (class, opinions, sexuality), Prior’s perception of the War is distinctive
and the source of his ability to subject even Rivers to rigorous and relentless interrogation. In the sequel to Regeneration,
The Eye in the Door, in which Prior is in military intelligence, his association with sight is at the forefront of the narrative.
Wilfred Owen
• Wilfred Owen cannot be described as a fully developed character since he appears in the novel in a few
isolated episodes and always alongside Sassoon.
• His importance is as a device for bringing out Sassoon’s own character, providing him with an artistic
partner with whom he can engage in dialogue regarding form and function of war poetry. Even Owen’s
entry into the novel is unassuming, ‘a short, dark-haired man sidling round the door.’
• Owen is initially cast as Sassoon’s subordinate or inferior – a would-be poet who regards Sassoon with
admiration and even hero-worship. He feels outclassed and eclipsed by him both socially and poetically. He
hears Sassoon’s ‘clipped, aristocratic voice’ and ‘bored expression.’ It is the only time we get a glimpse into
Owen’s status as middle class and is an example of how Barker lets the reader use their own knowledge of
Owen to paint a fuller picture.
• This may indicate an awareness on Barker’s part that Owen is the better-known poet of the two at the
time the novel was written –and still today.
• In an interview, Barker said she found Owen a particularly difficult historical figure to translate into fiction
because he “comes with his own pre-existing myth.” (Sheryl Stevenson, With the Listener in Mind, Critical
Perspectives on Pat Barker, 2005, p176).
• In her description of the process whereby Sassoon encourages Owen to see the War as an appropriate
subject for poetry, then helps him to develop his renowned Anthem for Doomed Youth, Barker is
portraying Sassoon’s part in developing a literary reputation that will equal, or even surpass his own. By
the later part of the novel, Owen is more confident in his own ideas and is assuming a more equal artistic
partnership with Sassoon.
• According to critic Daniel W. Hipp in The Poetry of the Shellshock (2005), Owen not only symbolically
discovered his poetic voice under Sassoon’s guidance, but also recovered his physical fluency, losing the
‘slight stammer’ Sassoon noted he possessed at their first meeting.
‘My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori‘
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• Regeneration also refers to Owen’s growing attachment to his mentor. The scene where the two men
share a final meal at Craiglockhart is, on Owen’s part at least, full of unvoiced intimacy. This indicates that
while War is now a fit subject for poetic expression, love between men is not for public ears or eyes.
Structure, Effect, Impact
Language and
Narrative Style
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Language and Style – Overview (1)
• Pat Barker is renowned for the simplicity of her writing style, rejecting complex vocabulary and syntax in favour of plain,
even terse sentence construction. This is directly linked to her preference for telling her story through dialogue.
• Rivers’ exchanges with his patients are central to the novel, entire chapters of which are almost wholly conversation.
• The text is anchored in the language of everyday speech, with no use of a more ‘mannered’ or stylised narrative voice.
• This is reinforced by Barker’s habitual omission of the reporting clause in the conversations, thus moving her role as
author even more into the background and allowing the reader a direct involvement with the action taking place.
EXAMPLE: Rivers and Prior in Chapter 7: “All right, I’ll see you tomorrow…”etc. Have a look now.
• What do we know from this exchange?
• How do we know who is speaking?
• What can we tell about their tone of voice or manner and why?
• What’s their relationship here?
• Because Barker chooses not to use an omniscient narrator in Regeneration, we are not given a detached viewpoint on
either the characters or the action. We have to make up our own minds about what we’re ‘hearing’.
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Language and Style – Overview (2)
• The narrative point of view keeps changing as we see events through the eyes of different characters.
• We witness what they are thinking and feeling without the apparent use of an intermediary authorial voice.
• Example: when Rivers meets Willard and his wife who are unable to navigate their way back up the drive at Craiglockhart,
we only learn of Willard’s emotional state through Rivers’ perception of it: ‘He felt Willard’s fury at being stranded like
this, impotent. Good. The more furious he was the better.’
• Typically, this tells the reader as much about Rivers as it does about Willard: Rivers’ alertness to Willard’s emotional state
is a direct consequence of his personal involvement with all his patients.
• Another Barker hallmark is her ability to reproduce the patterns of working-class speech, particularly Tyneside dialect
(her own roots). Although Regeneration is set in Scotland, her introduction of the Geordie munitions works Sarah Lumb
and friends enables her to bring their distinctive voices into the narrative:
‘She says, “I went down the town and there was a man winked at us and I winked back. He says, “Howay over the Moor.”’ So
she says “I gans over the Moor with him”, she says, “and I let him have what he wanted.”’
• Barker knows First World War literature is dominated by male voices, the majority middle or upper class, so she uses this
aspect to tell her other story of the War – those who stayed behind and women in particular.
• Other areas of interest: the mobility of the narrative (people, places, contexts), literary styles, used deliberately and selfconsciously in places – see next slides – and her depiction of the creative formulation of poetry.
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Literary Elements
Literary Technique
Narrator and Point of View
Tone and Mood
Example
That of each individual as they appear.
Two purposes: insight to more than one character at the
same time, also how we as outsiders are brought into to
make sense of each person’s viewpoint. We make
assumptions, more realistic outcome.
The novel's thoughtful tone matches its melancholy
mood, interspersed with cause for optimism.
Barker, who describes the brutal and sometimes
impossible journey to recovery, allows readers to retain
some optimism at the end of the story.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Major Conflict
Climax
Foreshadowing
Understatement
Allusions
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Effects on the Text/Reader
Barker uses understatement to underline Billy Prior's
forced emotional detachment from the war in Chapter 8.
Literary Elements
Literary Technique
Example
Imagery
A hallway becomes a "trench without a sky“. The sound of
a tree scratching against a window pane becomes the
sound of "machine-gun fire“.
Effects on the Text/Reader
Paradox
The novel, which weaves together many contrasting
stories, often uses parallelism to draw comparisons
between these smaller narratives.
Parallelism
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Personification
Allegory
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See Journey’s End – Dug out = Front line.
"The wind went on rising all evening. By the time Sassoon
left Owen's room, it was wailing round the building,
moaning down chimneys, snapping branches off trees
with a crack like rifle fire"
Barker emphasises the antagonistic power of Sassoon's
memories of war; they are omnipresent in his life and as
dangerous as enemy soldiers.