Themes Flashcards
Masculinity
During World War I, Dr. Rivers works as a psychiatrist in the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland, treating British officers in various stages of mental breakdown. As a psychiatrist, Rivers is in a position to closely analyse the various pressures that soldiers feel during wartime, not only from the battlefield, but from society. The most powerful forces in a soldier’s life, Rivers observes, are the narrow expectations of masculinity and what it means to be a man, which often exacerbates his patients’ mental trauma. Through Rivers’s observations, Regeneration argues that in order to produce healthier men, society must redefine what it means to be a man, with far less emphasis placed on stereotypically masculine traits.
Both Rivers and his patients constantly feel pressured to behave in stereotypically masculine ways, suggesting that society at large expects all men to fit into a narrow ideal of what it means to be a man. Rivers observes that, although soldiers in World War I witness and directly experience horrific suffering, society expects them to remain absolutely stoic, suggesting that emotional repression is held up as a mark of masculinity. He notes, “They’d been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness. Men who broke down, or cried, or admitted to feeling fear were sissies, weaklings, failures. Not men.” However, such emotional repression often leads their minds to feel overwhelmed, triggering a psychological breakdown, suggesting that such masculine repression is deeply unhealthy. Fellow soldiers expect each other to fit into the stereotypical masculine ideal as well. One of Rivers’ patients, Second-Lieutenant Prior, recalls that even on the front lines in France, he sometimes felt belittled because he did not fit the stereotypical ideal: he did not hunt, he did not wear khaki shirts, and so on. This feeling of inadequacy suggests that men themselves are prone to judge each other’s manhood, as well as their own, by whether or not they behave in a supposedly masculine fashion. Even soldiers, who are often seen as the ideal of masculinity and bravery, are not exempt from these societal expectations. Prior’s father embodies society’s expectations for how a masculine man is supposed to behave. Although Prior had a debilitating mental breakdown (causing intermittent mutism) on the battlefield and requires psychiatric treatment, Prior’s father is dismissive of it, feeling that it makes him less than a man, since Prior was unable to remain stoic and endure the hardships. Prior’s father even tells Rivers that he wishes Prior had actually been shot, since then he might feel some level of sympathy for his son, suggesting that societal expectations are so strongly-held that Prior’s father would rather his own son be physically injured than to endure the shame of Prior not meeting society’s ideals of masculine strength.
As a psychiatrist, Rivers argues that while masculine ideals are not inherently wrong, in many instances they are counterproductive to the tasks at hand, and soldiers may even need to exhibit traits that society deems feminine. Rivers observes that although they will not admit it, officers take on a motherly role toward their men. An officer tends to his soldiers’ blistered feet on long marches, ensures that each man has the food and gear he needs to survive, and gives comfort as best he can when his soldiers are afraid. Rivers notes that the “perpetually harried expression” officers have while they speak of their men is exactly the same expression worn by impoverished mothers trying to sustain large families, “totally responsible for lives they have no power to save.” As Rivers observes, even in war, a seemingly masculine setting, officers must embody a stereotypically feminine role to care for and protect the lives of their troops, suggesting that masculine ideals are inadequate—and even harmful—in many situations.
As a psychiatrist, Rivers’s own style of treatment is notably feminine. Rather than stoically repressing his patients’ emotions, Rivers gently and patiently counsels his patients to feel their emotions, to cry or scream at the horrors of war as they need. Although Rivers’ goal is to recuperate his patients to the point that they can return to war, he does so by “nurturing,” not by threatening. One of his patients even refers to him as a “male mother.” Contrasting with Rivers’s feminine, nurturing approach to psychiatry, Dr. Yealland, whom Rivers witnesses working in London, takes a stereotypically masculine approach to psychiatry. Yealland holds a god-like view of his own power and authority, and tells his patients that he will unquestionably cure them within a single session. To treat a patient with mutism, Yealland locks himself and the man in a dark room and electrocutes the man, torturing him for hours until he regains a shaky ability to form words with his mouth once again. Although the patient is technically cured of mutism, Rivers can clearly see that his psychological trauma has only increased, implying that Rivers’s feminine, nurturing approach leads to a better long-term outcome than Yealland’s domineering, masculine method.
Rivers’s practice and observations do not argue that men should be emasculated or made effeminate, but suggests that society ought to reevaluate what it means to be a man, with less emphasis on meeting narrowly-defined and often inadequate masculine ideals. Rivers’s ultimate goal for his patients is to return them to the battlefield, and thus his treatment does not make “any encouragement of weakness or effeminacy.” Rather, Rivers recognizes that stereotypically feminine characteristics—tenderness, a nurturing spirit, emotional expression—are necessary even for men on the battlefield, arguing that society needs to loosen its strict expectations on men to meet a stoic, masculine ideal. However, Rivers also recognises that such characteristics so contradict masculine ideals that “they could be admitted into consciousness only at the cost of redefining what it meant to be a man.” This ultimately suggests that in order to produce psychologically healthy men, society must adjust its view of manhood to allow for a balance between stereotypically masculine and feminine characteristics.
Pat Barker’s novel points out the extreme pressure that society exerts upon men to fit a narrow ideal of masculinity and argues that this concept of manhood needs to be redefined in much broader terms.
Duty and loyalty
Regeneration takes place in 1917, during World War I. Although Germany is already exhausted and wants a “negotiated peace,” Britain and its allies are committed to fighting for a more thorough victory. For soldiers fighting and dying in a war that could clearly be resolved—though it would not suit certain aristocrats’ profit margins or ideals—this raises the ethical dilemma of whether their sense of duty should compel them to sacrifice their lives for a cause that seems rather questionable, as argued by Second Lieutenant Sassoon, a decorated officer turned conscientious objector. Ultimately, through Sassoon’s anti-war arguments and Dr. Rivers’s psychiatric work with traumatised soldiers, the novel suggests that even one’s noble sense of duty or loyalty should not compel a person to fight in or support a futile war.
As both Sassoon and Rivers recognize, duty to nation and countrymen demands that young men fight in their nation’s wars, especially since others will have to if they do not. Rivers is sympathetic to Sassoon’s argument that the war should be ended, since the Germans are ready to surrender and the lives being lost at this point seem wasted for the sake of national pride. However, he also believes that it is the soldiers’ duty to fight, and his duty to mend their minds and return them to the battlefield. As a British citizen (though serving in Scotland), Rivers is dominated by “his belief that the war must be fought to a finish, for the sake of the succeeding generations,” suggesting that duty to both nation and countrymen may override one’s own ethical objections to fighting. Although Sassoon enters the story as a conscientious objector to the war—his superiors send him to the Craiglockhart psychiatric hospital in part for minor mental breakdowns, but mainly as an attempt to discredit him as insane—he is a decorated and venerated officer with several medals for bravery, demonstrating that Sassoon recognizes his duty to his country. Even more than duty to country, Sassoon is motivated by his duty to his men, and he chafes against the relative comfort of Craiglockhart while his soldiers risk their lives on the front, suggesting that even when a war seems pointless, duty to one’s fellow soldiers often encourages one to keep fighting.
In spite of his own sense of duty toward his men, Sassoon’s anti-war argument points out that although an individual’s duty as a soldier suggests that he should follow his nation into war, the people vouching for such wars are not the people making the sacrifices themselves. This suggests that the expectations of duty placed upon soldiers are often woefully unjust. Sassoon’s anti-war declaration states that he rejects the “political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed,” and he later argues that “the people who’re keeping this war going […] [are] feathering their own nests,” demonstrating his belief that the war is being prolonged not to defend France or England, but for ulterior motives by people in power, even when the monthly death tolls reach as high as 102,000. The many horrors that Rivers’ patients recount to him reinforce this notion that the war is not inherently noble, and has no higher purpose. For instance, Prior recounts a time when his unit was forced to repeatedly advance on a German trench and be gunned down by their artillery, sustaining huge losses—not for any strategic goal, but simply because his superiors believed “the pride of the British Army requires that absolute dominance must be maintained in No Man’s Land at all times.” Such loss of life for something as nominal as the “pride of the British army” seems undeniably unjust and banal. Rivers originally regards this practice of society’s old men sending young men to die for their own purposes as the “bargain […] on which all patriarchal societies are founded”—if the young men in society are willing to sacrifice themselves for the selfish wishes of the old men, those young men who survive will in turn inherit the right to sacrifice their own sons in the next war. This mindset highlights the illogic of fighting wars merely to fulfill society’s expectations of a male duty, and suggests that this unjust mindset only perpetuates one dreadful war after another.
Although Rivers continues to do his duty as a psychiatrist and tries to maintain his belief in one’s duty to wage war, he ultimately realizes that the horrific costs of war are unjustifiable, and any society that devours its own young men is not worthy of loyalty. While Rivers sits awake at night holding Burns (a young former officer whose mind has been so traumatized by the war that his life is effectively shattered) in the midst of a terrifying hallucinatory episode, the psychiatrist thinks to himself, in a near fury, that “Nothing justifies this. Nothing nothing nothing.” Rivers’ realization argues that no sense of duty or ethical argument about saving future generations can possibly justify the horrific costs that war inflicts on a nation’s young men. Although Rivers was once a patriotic young man, by middle age the “sheer extent of mess” (the number of young minds and lives he’s seen utterly wrecked by war trauma) convinces him that “a society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance.” Regardless of one’s righteous sense of duty, any nation that so freely sacrifices its own young men for financial or political gain does not deserve one’s loyalty, meaning that none should feel compelled to fight a futile or pointless war.
Regeneration refrains from embracing outright pacifism, allowing that some wars may be necessary in extreme circumstances. Even so, the novel and its characters utterly condemn wars waged for an ulterior motive or the interests of certain elites, as so many wars are.
Male relationships
The majority of the characters in Regeneration are men, and the story explores the various relationships and affections that arise among them. Although the novel takes place in the midst of the horrors of World War I, several feel love toward each other as comrades, parents, friends, or even romantic partners. Although on the surface these relationships seem quite similar, prevailing societal and cultural attitudes celebrate some of these relationships while reviling others. These contradictory attitudes place men in complex and often confusing situations where affection is both yearned for and despised, encouraged and persecuted. By pointing to the similarities of love between comrades, friends, and lovers, the narrative argues that society is hypocritical in its view of love and affection between men, valuing and lauding it in some instances while forbidding and even persecuting it in others.
In war, society praises and fosters camaraderie among soldiers so they can fight and persevere as a unit, demonstrating that society does encourage love between men, when it serves society’s purposes. Rivers regards camaraderie as a form of love that society easily accepts, saying, “in war, you’ve got this enormous emphasis on love between men—comradeship—and everybody approves.” Since it serves national interest, love among comrades is celebrated. Captain Graves, Sassoon’s commanding officer, glowingly tells Rivers about the love between Sassoon and his men, saying, “Sassoon’s the best platoon commander I’ve ever known. The men worship him […]. And he loves them. Being separated from them would kill him.” Such camaraderie is essential for soldiers to be effective and work together. Thus, within the military context, neither man sees such love as abnormal or wrong, demonstrating that society encourages such love between men when it suits a larger social purpose, such as advancing the nation’s cause in war. Sassoon forms a loving friendship with Owen, another patient at Craiglockhart, over their shared experience as soldiers and shared expression of that experience through poetry. This friendship, though outside the demands of combat, is still deemed acceptable by other doctors and patients since it still fits within the norms of masculine camaraderie, suggesting that as long as love between men is centered around something as supposedly righteous and masculine as war, it may still be permissible.
However, society in the novel still considers homosexuality to be among the worst social transgressions, demonstrating that though society encourages one form of love between men, it fiercely objects to any forms of physical affection or deeper attraction. Sassoon is a self-professed homosexual (though he only admits this privately and confidentially) and Graves is implied to be gay himself. Yet when one of Graves’s friends is arrested for his homosexuality, Graves consciously pushes away from Sassoon and acts as if homosexuality is an “abominable thing,” hurting Sassoon in the process. This demonstrates not only that society deems homosexuality a criminal offense, but that it carries such intense social stigma that Graves is willing to cut off a close relationship to protect himself from it. Likewise, despite Sassoon and Owen’s deep and almost-intimate love for each other—on their last meeting, Owens is “drunk and afraid of becoming too serious”—when they part, they are so wary and self-conscious of showing any physical affection toward each other that Sassoon settles for patting Owen lightly on the shoulder before saying goodbye to him forever. This further demonstrates that even in a simple friendship, the fear of being labeled a homosexual inhibits men’s ability to show simple affection toward each other as an expression of their loving friendship. Several other male characters are unable to show even platonic affection toward other men, since they are fearful of being seen as homosexual. Prior, for instance, can be physically affectionate toward his girlfriend, Sarah—demonstrating that it is affection toward other men, not physical affection itself, with which he struggles. However, after a particularly painful hypnosis session with Rivers, Prior, sobbing, grabs onto Rivers arms and begins head-butting him in the chest. Though it seems violent, Rivers realizes that “it was the closest Prior could come to asking for physical contact.” Prior’s inability to show or ask for any kind of physical affection from Rivers, whom he comes to regard as a parental figure, suggests that the societal fear of being perceived as a homosexual diminishes men’s ability for even comforting physical affection toward other men, even when they desperately need it.
Rivers contends that this simultaneous encouragement of camaraderie and forbiddance of deeper affections makes society hypocritical in its expectations, and resultantly more intolerant toward homosexuality in times of war. Although Sassoon expresses that he’d hoped society was growing more tolerant of homosexuality before the war started, Rivers admits that in spite of society’s demand for soldiers to love each other as comrades, “there’s always this little niggle of anxiety. Is it the right kind of love? Well, one of the ways to make sure it’s the right kind is to make it crystal clear what the penalties for the other kind are.” Rivers aptly observes that society’s demand for soldiers to love each other, but not too much, ironically make society even more intolerant and hypocritical.
Regeneration points out that, especially in the war-filled years of the early-20th century, love between men was simultaneously encouraged and forbidden, highlighting society’s hypocrisy in its dealings with male affection in all its forms, including homosexuality.
Trauma and mental illness
The horrific conditions of World War I and the advent of trench warfare created widespread trauma among soldiers. The horrors of the war led to widespread mental breakdown, referred to as “war neurosis” in Regeneration. This psychological affliction was also referred to as “shell shock” at the time, prior to the modern understanding of the illness as post-traumatic stress disorder. Although psychiatric doctors such as Rivers are commissioned by the military to treat war neurosis, much of the public does not recognise it as a legitimate condition, viewing it rather as a moral failure or mark of cowardice. Through Rivers’s treatment and observations of war neurosis, the narrative argues that such mental breakdown is not a mark of cowardice, but the natural result of human beings getting placed in intensely stressful and traumatic environments for long periods of time, suggesting that it is not the result of weakness or insanity.
Although many people see mental breakdown as a sign of weakness, many decorated officers and excellent soldiers experience it after a certain length of time in combat, implying that such mental breakdown is not a symptom of an individual’s inherent weakness or cowardice. Burns, a young soldier, experiences horrible trauma—in the worst of his experiences at war, an explosion throws him through the air and he lands head-first in the belly of a rotting corps. Yet when he experiences symptoms of war neurosis and is honorably discharged from the army to return to civilian life, multiple civilians hand him a white feather, a sign of cowardice, demonstrating the common belief that a mental breakdown indicates an individual is cowardly or mentally weak. However, even the bravest soldiers in the book experience breakdown eventually, suggesting it is not cowardice. Sassoon, though a revered and decorated officer, has hallucinations of his dead friends’ corpses. In spite of Sassoon’s mental breakdown, he and many other of Rivers’s patients still desire to return to combat so they can protect their comrades, firmly arguing that mental breakdown is not a symptom of a cowardly or weak mind.
Rather than a sign of weakness, Rivers argues to both civilians and his patients that mental breakdown is the natural result of prolonged stress and trauma, rather than a mental illness or personal failure. While explaining the nature of Prior’s mental breakdown to Prior himself, Rivers suggests that rather than a failed resolve or the fallout from a single traumatic event, “it’s more a matter of…erosion. Weeks and months of stress in a situation where you can’t get away from it.” This suggests that being enclosed in a highly stressful environment, such as a military trench, plays a significant and even predictable role in war neurosis. Although Rivers works in a hospital in Scotland, far from the fighting in France, he too develops a minor war neurosis which manifests in the characteristic stammer and a facial twitch. Although Rivers’s life is never endangered, the stress of the hospital and repeatedly hearing and witnessing traumatic flashbacks affects his own mind as well. Rivers has nothing to fear yet experiences his own minor breakdown, which reinforces the argument that mental breakdown and war neurosis come from prolonged stress rather than moral failure or a singular event.
Mental breakdown and war neurosis develops over long periods of time, afflicting the brave as well as the cowardly. The widespread nature of the illness ultimately suggests that war neurosis is not a sign of weakness or insanity, but an entirely sane reaction to the horror and absurdity of war, and the unsustainable environment these conditions create. Rivers reveals to Prior that mutism, such as Prior experiences during his neurotic episodes, “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.” This further suggests that rather than signifying dysfunction or insanity, such neuroses (though debilitating) are the mind’s natural method of resolving inner conflict.
However, this proposition puts Rivers in a tenuous position. He realises that if neurosis is a patient’s “unconscious protest” against horrible conditions, then by coaxing his patients through their traumatic experiences and teaching them to overcome their neuroses, he is “silencing a human being,” destroying their mind’s unconscious will or ability to protest so that the military can send them straight back to the fighting front, to experience even more trauma and horror. Rivers thus realises that he is treating soldiers for their sane reactions to an insane war, suggesting that curing their mental breakdowns and sending them back to conflict is itself insanity.
Alienation and belonging
Having experienced so much chaos, violence, and trauma on the front lines in France, many of the soldiers in Regeneration have difficulty living in the civilian world in Scotland, feeling as if they no longer belong there or share anything in common with other civilians. The novel suggests that for many soldiers, their combat experience makes them feel alienated from society, leaving them with an intense need to feel that they belong to something.
Even after leaving the violence at the front, several officers in the story find it difficult to re-enter society and assimilate into civilian life, suggesting that soldiers’ traumatic experiences can make them feel alienated from the comparatively peaceful, unassuming civilian population. Sassoon admits that although he no longer hates the enemy German soldiers, he now hates his own country’s civilians for not understanding the true horror of the war they tend to support. While Prior is visiting the beach with his girlfriend Sarah, he looks at the other beachgoers and finds himself despising them for how happy they look, while he himself is haunted by memories of picking up pieces of his troops’ disintegrated bodies. Prior feels that all the happy civilians somehow “owed him something,” suggesting again that the traumatic experience of war can leave soldiers feeling at odds with their own people. Similarly, although Burns is discharged from the military and lives a civilian’s life once again, his frequent night terrors and inability to cope with much of his war trauma leave him at least partially isolated. Although as a young man he ought to be going on dates, building a career, and making a name for himself, Burns instead must live alone, barely able to care for himself let alone anyone else. This again suggests the tragic manner in which wartime experiences leave soldiers isolated from average citizens.
However, in spite of this feeling of alienation, those same characters seek out new ways to belong to some sort of community. This behavior suggests that even though soldiers may struggle to reintegrate into society, it is possible, and they may yet find some manner of belonging. Although Prior struggles to not despise other civilians, his relationship with Sarah, herself a civilian, ultimately grounds him and helps him to see that people who have not experienced the same trauma he has can ultimately be a safe “haven for him,” a symbolic shelter where he can forget about the horrors of war. However, Prior also wishes to be “known as deeply as possible” which would require telling Sarah everything he has seen and thus breaking that shelter. This suggests that although Prior has found a sense of safety and belonging in his relationship with Sarah, it is not a perfect solution. Burns, on the other hand, slowly begins to recover his sense of belonging by trying to learn new handcrafting skills from anyone who will teach him, including the town drunk. Although he is still haunted by his wartime experiences, this human connection and sense of shared goals gives Burns an important point of contact with the civilian world, helping him to belong to even a part of it by small degrees. Tragically, Sassoon proclaims, “I think the army’s probably the only place I’ve ever really belonged,” and in spite of his protests against the war, returns to fight alongside his men at the front—hoping, Rivers believes, to die there. Sassoon’s witnessing of the war’s atrocities and society’s general disregard for the horrors it has inflicted on young men causes Sassoon to feel that the soldier’s lot is the only one for him. Sassoon’s disenfranchisement from society seems only exacerbated by his homosexuality—setting him at odds with the social norms of civilian life in yet another way. Although Sassoon’s return to combat seems tragic, it ultimately offers him a greater sense of belonging among the only people he seems to still respect in the world: fellow soldiers. This is likely more than he would have ever found if he had been court-martialed as a conscientious objector as he originally hoped, and offers resolution to Sassoon’s feelings of alienation, even though it is a dark ending.
Regeneration suggests that returning to the civilian world is a major struggle for soldiers, especially soldiers experiencing such horrors as occur in World War I, and that each must find their own way to restore a sense of belonging to a group—be it a family, a community, or even an ideal.
