Regeneration: The first novel in Pat Barker's Booker Prize-winning Regeneration trilogy (Regeneration, 1)

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Callan – Callan is a patient of Dr. Yealland who has served in every major battle in World War I. He finds himself in the care of Dr. Yealland after suffering from mutism. Callan tries to fight against his doctor's treatment but eventually gives in to it. Parenthood is linked in the novel to comradeship and caring. Parent-like protectiveness appears as a natural reaction to having men under one's command or patients under one's watch. Especially in wartime situations—in which control over many aspects of one's existence is so limited—a desire to protect others serves as an outlet for the need for some measure of control. Some examples in the novel are Prior's fatherly feelings for his troops, and the way many of the patients hold Rivers to be a surrogate father figure.

emotions and the First World War Shell-shocked: trauma, the emotions and the First World War

In her "Author's Note" for the novel, she describes the research which she used to create the novel, and how she drew on a number of sources from different period authors. The novel draws considerable inspiration from historical events. Literary critic Greg Harris describes her use of historical circumstances and historical source materials as largely, " "true" to the extent that the lives of the real-life characters, including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Robert Graves, did intertwine." [7] Moreover, Harris argues that Barker accurately captures the psychological situation in which the characters, especially the literary characters, were producing their poetry. [7] French literary critic Marie-Noëlle Provost-Vallet highlights different misinterpretations and anachronistic cultural references supporting a critique of the novel by blogger and critic Esther MacCallum-Stewart. [8] However, she also notes the novel accurately assesses other parts of the historical context, such as the treatment of the World War I poets' and their poetic process. [8] Genre [ edit ] The Regeneration Trilogy is a series of three novels by Pat Barker on the subject of the First World War. In 2012, The Observer named it as one of "The 10 best historical novels". [1] A fellow poet and soldier and a 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 honor his contract to his country. Sassoon thinks Graves is hypocritical for this stance. Nevertheless, Graves is a true friend to Sassoon; he always tries to do what is best for his friend, even if he does not do what is best for his cause. Willard a b Dinnage, Rosemary (1996). "Death's gray land. (Pat Barker, literature and WW1)". The New York Review of Books. 15 February 1996.Are you serious? You honestly believe that that gaggle of noodle-brained half-wits down there has a complex mental life? Oh, Rivers’.

Regeneration: Key Facts | SparkNotes Regeneration: Key Facts | SparkNotes

Catharsis refers to a moment of release. This is often from strong or repressed emotions. For example, coming to terms with repressed emotions can be release from the stress this repression places on a person. This is a cathartic moment. Sarah Lumb – Sarah is a completely fictional character. The girlfriend of the character Billy Prior, she is working-class, " Geordie," and works in a munitions factory in Scotland producing armaments for British soldiers. Ada Lumb, her mother, appears briefly and has a hardened attitude towards love and relationships. Sassoon refers to Edward Carpenter's writing on sexuality The Intermediate Sex, and it is implied that Sassoon is a homosexual because he states that such works made him feel normal about his sexuality. [23] Joyes, Kaley (2009). "Regenerating Wilfred Owen: Pat Barker's revisions". Mosaic. 42 (3): 169–83. ISSN 0027-1276. Bourke writes history and Barker writes fiction, but both tell stories which were, when first published, at odds with how most of us imagined the First World War. They are both also stories which are very much products of their time. Dismembering the Male still repays reading today – very few historians dealing with similar aspects of the war have matched its scope or achievement since – but it is also rooted in the historiographical trends of the mid 1990s. Bourke partly inspired further historical research on masculinity, the body, and war, but her book is also a product of existing interest in these areas, and the alacrity with which her lead was followed suggests a field ripe for harvesting. There’s nothing odd about this: the discipline of history works through the continual revision of old arguments and realization of new perspectives, and sooner or later gender and the body will seem old hat. Yet although cultural history has its critics, no serious historian would now condemn Bourke for writing a history that is informed by the disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) concerns of its time. Barker, on the other hand, has been seen as fair game, with historians happy to censure her for projecting the concerns of 1990s liberals and lefties onto her wartime protagonists. (4) There is a case to be made that, at least in Regeneration, this isn’t quite what she’s doing: after all, she is writing about a soldier who protested against the war and a doctor who was transformed from an instinctive Conservative into a potential Labour candidate by the experience of war. This isn’t projection so much as selecting a story which chimed with more widespread concerns at the time of writing the book.Much of the novel explores the types of cultural ideologies, like nationalism and masculinity, that facilitated the War. Barker states that she chose to write about World War I "because it's come to stand in for other wars, as a sort of idealism of the young people in August 1914 in Germany and in England. They really felt this was the start of a better world. And the disillusionment, the horror and the pain followed that. I think because of that it's come to stand for the pain of all wars." [2] Critic Kaley Joyes argues that choices like the inclusion of the work by poet Wilfred Owen in the novel, whose life has been romanticised as "an expressive exemplar of the war's tragic losses," highlights this thematic interest in breaking down the common ideological interpretations of the war. [15] Masculinity [ edit ] It's not an antiwar book in the very simple sense that I was afraid it might seem at the beginning. Not that it isn't an antiwar book: it is. But you can't set up things like the Somme or Passchendaele and use them as an Aunt Sally, because nobody thinks the Somme and Passchendaele were a good idea. So in a sense what we appear to be arguing about is never ever going to be what they [the characters] are actually arguing about, which is a much deeper question of honor, I think. "Honor" is another old-fashioned word like "heroism," but it's very much a key word in the book. [5] The Eye in the Door follows Prior as he wrangles with all of this. He also gradually comes to terms with his sexuality, beginning a relationship with Captain Charles Manning. At the same time, he maintains a deep love for Sarah Lumb, now his fiancé. Barker gives the impression that Prior may be bisexual. Prior also makes recurrent visits to Rivers to help with his trauma throughout the text. As in Regeneration, Pat Barker includes both real characters and real historical events in her novel. The Ghost Road (1995): Pat Barker Fig. 2 - The soldier's in Regeneration struggle with the psychological effects of the war, and are unable to express the horrors they faced even as they heal in the hospital from physical injuries. Around the same time, Sassoon becomes friends with another patient, Wilfred Owen. He too is a poet and Sassoon helps him with his poetry. Owen improves as a writer because of this. He has great respect for Sassoon and greatly admires his work.

Regeneration by Pat Barker | Pat Barker | The Guardian

Pat Barker was born in 1943 in Thornaby-on-Tees, England, where she was raised primarily by her grandparents. Barker's grandfather was an important influence on her. As a young man, he had fought in World War I; toward the end of his life, he became increasingly haunted by his war experience. Pat's grandfather had been bayoneted during the war, and Pat would see his scars when he went to the sink to wash. His experiences in the war made influenced Barker's understanding of the period, making the effect of the war more immediate and personal. I think the whole British psyche is suffering from the contradiction you see in Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, where the war is both terrible and never to be repeated and at the same time experiences derived from it are given enormous value," Barker told The Guardian. "No one watches war films in quite the way the British do." [17] Through the experiences of the characters, Barker portrays the horrors of war and the toll it takes on those who fight in it. The novel also touches on issues of class and power, with the upper-class officers often receiving preferential treatment over the working-class soldiers. The women in the bar, including Sarah Lumb, are based on characters from a scene in T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland. [24] a b c Barker, Pat; Rob Nixon (2004). "An Interview with Pat Barker". Contemporary Literature. 45 (1): –21. doi: 10.1353/cli.2004.0010. ISSN 1548-9949.On 5 November 2019, the BBC News listed Regeneration on its list of the 100 most influential novels. [27] According to academic critic Karin Westman, Regeneration was "well received by reviewers in both the UK and the United States." [28] Beyond frequent praise, the main points discussed often related to the veracity of Barker's depiction of the War period and about her role as a woman writer, along with the connections of this work to her previous novels. [28] Westman argues that many of these critics judged Barker's work on "content rather than style", so that this work allowed her to break from her earlier classification as a regional, working-class feminist into the "(male) canon of British literature". [28] The novel was even one of the "best novels of 1992", according to the New York Times. [1] [29] The tension between traditional models of masculinity and the experiences within the war runs throughout the novel. [7] Critic Greg Harris identifies Regeneration, along with the other two novels in the trilogy, as profiling the non-fictional experience of Sassoon and other soldiers who must deal with ideas of masculnity. [7] These characters feel conflicted by a model of masculinity common to Britain during this time: honour, bravery, mental strength, and confidence were privileged "manly" characteristics. [7] Yet they explore, internally and through conversation, what that model means for them and how the war changes how they should experience it. [7] In an interview with Barker in Contemporary Literature, Rob Nixon distinguishes between these ideas of "manliness" and the concept of masculinity as providing a larger definition for identity. Barker agrees with his assessment, saying, "and what's so nice about them is that they use it so unself-consciously: they must have been the last generation of men who could talk about manliness without going "ugh" inside." [5] 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 In the review of her novel Toby's Room, The Guardian stated about her writing, "You don't go to her for fine language, you go to her for plain truths, a driving story line and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world". [24] The following characters in Regeneration interact with each other throughout the novel as they grapple with the physical and psychological trauma of World War I.