Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Regeneration, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Masculinity, Expectations, and Psychological Health
War, Duty, and Loyalty
Male Relationships
Trauma and Mental Illness
Alienation vs. Belonging
Summary
Analysis
Sarah, Betty, Madge, and Lizzie sit together on their tea break. Sarah is disappointed that Prior hasn’t come around again in the weeks since, and Lizzie frets that her husband will come to see her while he’s on leave, since he tends to drink and beat her. Lizzie claims that, for her, since the war took her husband away, wartime is the most peace she’s had in years.
Like Prior’s father, Lizzie’s abusive husband embodies the worst form of domineering, unhinged masculinity. Especially for someone oppressed by that, the war provides a new sense of freedom and agency for Lizzie.
Themes
Rivers tends to a new patient named Willard, an officer with a newly-developed paralysis in his legs. Willard believes he must have a spine injury and will not admit that the paralysis is psychological, a way to avoid going back to the front, since this would be “tantamount to an admission of cowardice” in his mind.
Willard’s inability to recognize that he has a psychological problem suggests that his own expectations of himself as a masculine person and his prejudicial view of mental breakdown only further inhibit his recovery.
Themes
Sassoon sits at a table in the Conservative Club, waiting to meet Rivers for dinner. Though he is grateful to be away from Craiglockhart’s cafeteria, the civilians rouse the predictable hatred in him, which this time seems to have a sexual element, as well. Earlier that day, Sassoon had seen a friend’s name on the weekly casualty list, and he’d become furious at himself for succumbing to the comforts and safety of life at the hospital, as Rivers intended.
Yet again, the novel connects hatred (as a form of potential violence) with sex. Though the narrative does not explore this any further than merely mentioning it, this possibly suggests that masculinity, power, and violence are so held together by society that there is an inherent violence in male sexuality. Sassoon’s anger at himself suggests that he is plagued by guilt for sitting safely in Craiglockhart while others fight and die.
Themes
Rivers arrives, and as Sassoon pores over the menu, Rivers reflects that his life would be simpler if the protestor had been sent somewhere else entirely. Sassoon’s presence brings to the surface of his mind so many ethical concerns about war—namely that if mental breakdowns occur naturally under stress, as Rivers believes, then war, not weakness, is the root cause of all this pain. River has successfully suppressed these thoughts for years; it seems absurd that they should arise now. As they eat dinner, they speak about Sassoon’s friend who was just killed, and about others he knows that are dead or dying. Sassoon admits that it makes it painful to go on protesting here while his mates are dying on the front.
Both Rivers and Sassoon are in the process of painful adjustments as their beliefs and ideals are broken down and rebuilt, much the same as Head’s painful nerve regeneration in his arm. Ironically, Rivers and Sassoon develop in nearly opposite directions. Rivers begins to see the evils of war, while Sassoon begins to recognize that his sense of duty to comrades may outweigh his ethical objection to the war itself.
Themes
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Rivers leaves the club alone an hour later, contemplating how a young soldier’s life is much like an old man’s as he watches his friends and contemporaries die one after another. With Sassoon’s love for his men and desire to act with integrity and courage, Rivers realizes it would be quite easy to manipulate those virtues to force Sassoon back to the war, but he “respected Sassoon too much to manipulate him.” When Rivers arrives back at Craiglockhart’s gates, he finds Willard being pushed in a wheelchair by his visiting wife, except they are stranded at the bottom of the steep driveway. Rivers chats pleasantly with Willard’s wife and offers to push the wheelchair back up the hill, infuriating and humiliating Willard, exactly as Rivers hoped.
Rivers’s refusal to manipulate Sassoon even though it would simply and neatly serve his overall goal demonstrates that his affection for and respect of Sassoon is steadily growing; he cares not only about Sassoon’s fate but also his character development and the state of his mental health, and thus only wants him to go back to combat if he truly believes that he should. This contrasts with Rivers’s sly attack on Willard’s sense of his own masculinity by flirting with his wife and humiliating Willard by pushing him up the hill, hoping to break his sense of masculinity enough to admit that he has a psychological problem.
Themes
