Regeneration
The authorial purpose of Pat Barker and Wilfred Owen is to present the harsh reality, of World War 1 and to shock and move us through their portrayals of the horrors at the front and their consequences. Discuss.Regeneration is deliberately set in a psychiatric hospital, Craiglockhart, and this location highlights some of the major issues of war. Pat Barkers intention in terms of location is obviously because this emphasises some of the key elements of WW1 she wishes to explore, such as the mental trauma that the trenches caused, the often suicidal battle plans of those in charge of the conflict, plus other issues of hierarchical command. From the very beginning the experiences of the patients provide a disturbing insight into the effects of war on the soldiers. Within this hospital, which should be the soldiers sanctuary, their haven we are shocked and moved by Barkers portrayal of events as we realise that the men are seen as unmanly and degenerate for being in hospital.Barker uses the central character of senior psychiatrist Rivers through his therapy with the patients to highlight their war experiences and the horrific effects of those on them. She employs a mix of fictional and historical characters,
This is scandalous: these men who had their whole lives before them are now forced to remember "froth - corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer" being "drunk with fatigue; deaf with even to the hoots of shells". We realise there is something sinister and not right when Rivers "judged it more expedient than pleasant that he should accept" an invitation to visit Queens Square, where Yealland practises. His poems shock and move us even nearly a century later, through their graphic imagery, realism and appeals to the senses that almost bombard us. This is a poem in which a soldier gets "confined to camp" because he is seen to have a dirty uniform. Burns has a mental breakdown as he releases dead animals that have been nailed to a tree and arranges them in a circle. This poem creates the imagery of the young fighting men being reduced and made old before their time. The use of alliteration here makes the image clearer and more vivid in our minds, encouraging us more to be brought in and hear and experience the horror of people "guttering, choking, drowning". Barker's portrayal of Yealland coldly trying to repair the soldiers physically with little regard to their mental state moves us more if we are reading it alongside Wilfred Owen's poems, and we realise why these men are mute. There is an awful scene in Regeneration where the conditions Burns suffered take him back to the trenches in his imagination as he has been mentally broken by the effects of war. Most of the men managed to fit on the "clumsy helmets just in time", one soldier however didn't manage in the "ecstasy of fumbling" to get his helmet on in time to save himself. The vivid description of the corridor makes it seem very eerie, and unnatural as we hear a place that contains millions of men seems devoid of life. Barker through her extensive research has managed to capture the mood and the truth of the war and Owen because he was there makes it all seem very close, intimate and personal. One particular incident that everyone wanted to cover up was that of Burns. This is hugely pathetic as we see the soldiers are in a no-win situation. This horrible idea that shell shocked men in the hospital are seen by the authorities as failures and degenerates, links in with Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est.
Common topics in this essay:
Wilfred Owen,
Yealland Callan,
Regeneration Hierarchies,
Pathetic Fallacy,
Pat Barker,
Square Yealland,
Barker Regeneration,
WW1 Burns,
Est Owen,
Decorum Est,
et decorum,
et decorum est,
dead animals,
decorum est,
dulce et,
owen's poems,
owen describes,
innocent tongues,
appeals senses,
barker makes,
dulce et decorum,
enters electrical there's,
war soldiers,
electrical there's recovery,
yealland patient enters,
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Acceptance Essays
