regeneration quotes Flashcards
Rivers/Owen/Barker
“War is a vast crucible” Rivers
“The Poetry is in the pity” Owen
The title is “a central informing metaphor for River’s work” Barker
War seems to be “a terribly well-established habit of human beings” Barker
Hynes
“Within these historical brackets a number of stories are told”
Monteith
“Sassoon exposed the immorality of war”hey
“The war is pervasive and invasive”
“They are expected to be more masculine and feminine to succeed”
“Women are also clearly much more then symbols”
“The inflexibility hierarchy within the military that so angers Prior”
“Class relations are placed under the novel’s microscope”
Suffering and horror of the war/ Reality of war
“His suffering was without purpose or dignity” (Rivers about Burns)
“Mobilised into holes in the ground” (Rivers about the men, men have been emasculated, removal of all heroism or romanticism)
“Lying on top of each-other, writhing Like fish in a pound that’s dying out”
“What am I supposed to do with this gobstopper”
“He followed the bulk of his body, passively, like slime trail after a snail”
“He found Anderson huddled in a foetal position”
“Figures were no longer the size or shape of adult men”
“His face was so drained, so pale, e seemed to have left all his blood in France”
“Nothing justifies this. Nothing nothing nothing”
“He had missed the chance of being ordinary” (Rivers about Burns)
Front Line vs Home Front
“They had not sufficient imagination to realise”
“In his khaki, Prior moved among the like a ghost”
“they owed him something, all of them, and she should pay”
Duty and patriotism and expectations of the home front
“I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops..”
“pulling at a loose thread where his MC ribbon had been”
“Owing his courage and determination, all killed and wounded were brought in”
“He’d get a damn sight more sympathy from me with a bullet up his arse”
“the shame of home service”(Prior)
“Mons, the Marne, Aisne”
“Rivers had felt that he was witnessing the silence of human being”
“Discharged to duty”
Treatment of neurasthenia
“over a period of five years, they had charted the progress of regeneration”
“Clear conflict between River’s desire to continue using a method of treatment he believed in, but new to be experimental”
“They, floating helplessly above the battlefields, unable either to avoid attack or to defend themselves effectively against it, showing the highest incident of breakdown”
Brotherhood and male relationships
“I am a soldier, convinced I am acting on behalf of soldiers”
Masculinity and emasculation
“Men who broke down, or cried, or admitted to feeling fear, were sissies, weaklings, failures. Not men.”
“Excavating the grounds he stood on”
“You will never make me feel”
“Prior raised his blind and slobbery face. “Sorry about that.”
“I don’t think of myself as the kind of person who breaks down”
“intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorder that women suffered from in peace”
“The boy had a neat little hole”
“He cupped his genitals in his hands”
The role of women/femininity
“pubs around here don’t let women in”
“She held out her hand to him in a direct, almost boyish way”
“fifty bob a week”
“He didn’t know what to think of her, but then he was out of touch with women. They seemed to have changed so much during the war, to have expanded in all kinds of ways, whereas men over the same period has shrunk into a smaller and smaller space”
“Peace broke out… as far as i’m concerned the kaiser can keep him”
“No man likes to think he’s sliding in on another man’s leavings”
“All the women were yellowed skinned”
“They looked like machines, whose sole function was to make other machines”
“the irony of it is she’s still pregnant. She looks awful”
class
“Prior adopted a strangled version of the public school accent”
“It helps if you’ve been to the right school… shirts are the right colour… which is a deep shade of khaki by the way”
“I suppose it’s just a matter of officers having a more complex mental life”
“Unmistakeably ‘Baaaa! Baaaaa! Baaaaaa!”
“He clamped his hands down on to Callan’s wrists”
“He no longer smiled”
