Regeneration (novel)
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| Author | Pat Barker |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | War novel |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
| Released | 30 May 1991 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 288 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-670-82876-9 (first edition, hardback) |
Regeneration is a prize-winning novel by Pat Barker, first published in 1991. It is the first of three novels in the Regeneration Trilogy of novels on the First World War. The novel is based on the real-life experiences of British army officers being treated for shell shock during World War I. It was filmed in 1997.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
[edit] Part I
The plot revolves around an actual incident which occurred in 1917. The poet Siegfried Sassoon, who had been decorated for bravery during his service on the Western Front, suddenly decided to protest against the war. As a result, he was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, to be treated for neurasthenia ('shell-shock') by the pioneering psychiatrist and anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers. Friend and fellow poet Robert Graves, worried that Sassoon's declaration against the war could get him court martialled, is able to successfully convince a military board that Sassoon should not be punished.
Rivers directs the reader to the different patients he treats, each a victim of war in one way or another. These include a man called Burns who is unable to eat as the memory of the realisation of having a mouth filled with decomposing human flesh recurrs whenever he attempts to eat. Burns presents a real problem for Rivers as Rivers feels helpless and unable to find any way of solving Burns's problem. At one point, Burns leaves the hospital and hallucinates, causing him to strip naked and surround himself with animal corpses, which is suggestive of the way he now sees himself as a result of his war experiences.
Rivers also introduces Billy Prior, who, despite coming from a working class background, is an officer who initially suffers a form of mutism. At first, he takes to writing down comments on a piece of paper in order to communicate with Rivers. He later begins to speak, and it is evident that his mutism comes and goes. Prior repeatedly asks to be hypnotised by the Doctor rather than Rivers' conventional treatment, based on Freudian theories, where patients are encouraged to face up to their war experiences, in order to identify the cause of breakdown.
Several of the characters in the book are based on real people, including Rivers and Sassoon, the poets Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen, and doctors who actually worked at Craiglockhart. Other patients are based on Rivers' most well-publicised case histories. However, one of the central characters, the working-class officer Billy Prior, is entirely fictional. Prior arrives at the hospital having lost the power of speech as a result of a traumatic experience which Rivers gradually uncovers, but is at first hostile and defiant. His relationship with Sarah, a worker in an ammunition factory, is explored, throwing some light on his almost schizophrenic personality.
Barker went on to use Prior as the anti-hero of two sequels, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road.
[edit] Characters
- Siegfried Sassoon
- Dr. W.H.R. Rivers
- Billy Prior
- David Burns
- Wilfred Owen
- Anderson
- Sarah Lumb
- Ada Lumb
- Dr. Lewis Yealland
- Callan
- Robert Graves
- Henry Head
- Bryce
- Lizze
- Prior family
[edit] Freud in Regeneration
- Rivers was influenced by the writings of Freud on neurosis. While Rivers disagreed that neurosis was due to sexual factors he considered Freud's work to be of "direct practical use in diagnosis and treatment".[1]. Rivers felt that Freud was right that his patients actively suppressed their experiences at war.
- At Craiglockhart, a hospital only for officers rather than ordinary Privates, patients were encouraged to talk about their experiences of war rather than suppress them. Some in Regeneration were unwilling to do this. This treatment was pioneered by Freud.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
A 1997 film was made of the book (released as Behind the Lines in the USA). It starred Jonathan Pryce as Rivers and Jonny Lee Miller as Prior.
[edit] Further reading
Continuum Contemporaries: Pat Barker's Regeneration by Karin Westman (ISBN 0-8264-5230-2)
[edit] External links
- Sparknotes on Regeneration
- An essay on Freud and War neuroses in Regeneration
- A website with information on Craiglockhart hospital and the Regeneration novel
- A BBC radio interview with Pat Barker on the subject of military hospitals Audio File
- An interview with the author Pat Barker
- A site giving some historical and critical context to the novel
- An essay of masculinity in the Regeneration trilogy
- Background information on the character of Rivers
- A Lancet paper by Rivers
- Skyminds.net introduction to the novel
- Skyminds.net notes on the plot
