Barker's Methods Flashcards
1
Q
Explain Barker’s use of dialogue
A
- dialogue is Barker’s primary mode through which the story is told because the plot is driven by Rivers’s consultations with patients
- dialogue also supports the theme of psychotherapy and treatment (i.e. River’s ‘talking cure’) which encourages patients to come to accept their experiences through speaking about them
2
Q
Explain Barker’s use of colloquial speech
A
- everyday speech makes the characters feel authentic
- the novel is set at a time where one’s dialect was emblematic of which social class you belonged to so Barker’s use of colloquial, everyday speech also functions as a demarcation of class as characters would be otherwise accent-less
- Tyneside dialect is prevalent in the voices of the working-class characters of the novel (Prior and his parents, Sarah and the munitionettes) which adds other perspectives of war into the novel, ones that were often left out of mainstream accounts as these were written predominantly by middle and upper-class men
3
Q
What are the key lexical and grammatical features of Barker’s language and style and her reasons behind them?
A
- her writing lacks complex lexis and she uses simple sentence constructions
- her rather ordinary and easily understood diction reflects Barker’s belief that her writing should be accessible to all because the war and its aftermath touched the lives of people from all kinds of backgrounds and walks of life
- it also makes the novel feel current
- as Blake Morrison, proposes, Barker’s characters speak “not in their adopted ‘mock-medieval facetious humour’, but in current idiom”
- making the novel ‘current’ was important to Barker, as she believes WW1, like the Holocaust, “can never become the past” as it “revealed things about mankind that we cannot come to terms with and can never forget”
4
Q
How does setting function in the novel?
A
- Barker uses the setting of Craiglockhart War Hospital for Officer
5
Q
Explain Barker’s omission of the reporting clause and what function it performs in the novel
A
- Barker’s omission of the reporting clause submerges her role as author and helps to realistically reflect a psychotherapy consultation
- what and how it is said (i.e. pace of exchanges) reveals character identities and relationships between them
6
Q
Describe the narrative perspective of Regeneration
A
- not an omniscient narrator but a detached viewpoint that focalises on the characters or the action
- narrative POV moves between the perspectives and voices of many characters
- their reactions, thoughts and feelings are expressed without the use of an intermediary authorial voice
- rather, much of what the reader learns of the convalescing soldiers’ emotions is through Rivers’s perception of them, which often reveals things about Rivers also
- his alertness to such matters is a direct consequence of his personal involvement with his patients
7
Q
What effect does the diverse range of characters have on the text?
A
- bears testimony to Barker’s central point, that the war was experienced in many different ways and that all viewpoints are of value
- creates little sense of consensus about the direct and indirect effects of the war and whether its impact was completely negative
- challenges the myth that the war was a tragic waste of human life by showing how it contributed to the social emancipation of women and inspired many significant literary works
8
Q
Define symbolism and give the main examples in Regeneration
A
An object, image etc… that appears once to represent something else and helps the reader to understand an idea, concept.
The horse’s bit; men with scythes; Anderson’s dream
9
Q
Define motif and give the main examples in Regeneration
A
A recurring object, image or element in a literary work that helps to explain the text’s central idea.
Stuttering and mutism; light and shade; trenches; the natural world;
10
Q
Describe the symbol of the horse’s bit and state where it appears in the text
A
- chapter 22, page 235-6; analysis of its significance continues to the end of the chapter
- occurs after Rivers witnesses Yealland’s treatment of Callan
- in the dream, Rivers is walking through the corridors of the London hospital, where he sees a ‘deformed man’ who repeats the opening line of Sassoon’s Declaration
- dreamscape changes and he is trying to apply an EST electrode to a man’s mouth that does not fit
- when he tries to force it, he sees that it is a horse’s bit and that he has already done a lot of damage to the man’s mouth
- despite his distress at inflicting pain, he is forced to continue
11
Q
Explain the symbolic significance of the horse’s bit symbol
A
- a bit is used to control a horse, like a muzzle on a dog
- its association with animals speaks of the dehumanising treatment of men in war
- it symbolises control and Rivers’s fear that he is silencing his patients
- Barker wants the reader to make comparisons between Rivers’s actions in the dream and Yealland’s inhumane treatment
- Rivers questions whether his treatment is fundamentally no different than Yealland’s, as he considers that they are “both in the business of silencing” and are consequently fueling the war machine by sending men back to what lead to their trauma
- relies on Freudian dream theory - Rivers thinks this is a manifestation of what he is thinking
12
Q
Describe the symbol of men with scythes and state where it appears in the text
A
- page 98, chapter 9
- after talking with Prior about his late return to Craiglockhart and his mutism, Rivers is sitting on a bench, watching two patients cut the grass with scythes
- they undress partially and turn the exercise into a game before being told off by Patterson, the Head of Office Administration
13
Q
Explain the symbolic significance of the men with scythes
A
- ‘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 (scythe)
- 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
- this is perhaps 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
- its inclusion is clunky as Barker directly identifies it as being ‘symbolic’
14
Q
Explore Barker’s use of setting
A
- unconventional as it is a WW1 novel that is not set in a trench, although the imagery of a trench and the landscape of No-Man’s Land are often superimposed over the scenery of the homefront to remind readers that although the men have left the Western Front, the fighting continues in their minds as they battle with their conditions
- Craiglockhart is the primary setting; it foregrounds the theme of masculine crisis as the men deal with their emasculating physical injuries and symptoms of shell-shock
- sequences in northern towns are beneficial yet emasculating at times to Prior, as he feels reconnected to the world but also very distanced from it
- sequences in rural countryside areas speak of how nature played a big part in the men’s recovery as it was rejuvenating, viewed as having regenerative powers and provided distance from the horrors of war
15
Q
What is the symbolic significance of Craiglockhart as a setting?
A
- Located on the edge of Edinburgh, it reflects the men’s marginalisation and isolation arising from their physical and mental conditions
- Barker uses the evaluative adjective ‘decayed’ on page 142 to describe the hospital, suggesting that beneath the seemingly solid facade of the hospital’s imposing walls, there is a fragility, which could be symbolic of the convalescing soldiers’ conditions arising from their war experiences: whilst some of the soldiers may have been physically ‘intact’, they were mentally disturbed by what they had been a party to
- It is also a place where the fact of the men’s experiences and the fantasy of their hallucinations and nightmares exist side by side, making it rather ghostly and inconsistent location like the symptoms of shell-shock
