Regeneration: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

Rivers recommends Burns for “unconditional discharge” from the military on account of his mental state. During the examining board, while other officials are interviewing Burns, Rivers sees a bee caught against a pane of glass. To the surprise of everyone in the room, he walks over and uses a piece of paper to guide the bee through the open crack, watching as it flies away.

Rivers visits Prior in the sick bay yet again, since he passed out on the train with Sarah on their way home after the other passengers’ cigarette smoke constricted his lungs. Rivers tells Prior that he called for a physician to assess Prior’s breathing capacity, and that in Rivers’s mind, Prior should not go back to combat. However, Prior insists that he wants to return to combat, since he feels like he no longer belongs here amongst civilians, like he’s from a different world. Also, Prior admits that he wants to go into politics someday, and military service is the most important thing for that, though he feels as if he won’t be able without an Oxford or Cambridge degree. Rivers assures him that he can; he himself has no such degree.

While Rivers is shaving in his room, a nurse bangs on his door and tells him that Anderson started screaming in his room about blood. Rivers rushes to see him and finds that indeed Anderson is screaming, but the only blood is a few spots on the sink where his roommate cut himself shaving. Even so, Anderson soiled his own bed. Once he calms a bit, Rivers leaves to finish shaving.

The rest of Rivers’s day consists of back-to-back meetings with fussy patients, administrative meetings, and a short conversation with Bryce about Broadbent, who, while on leave, sent a telegram claiming his mother died and he needed more time for the funeral, which was granted. Broadbent eventually returned, receiving sympathetic attention from the VADs until Broadbent’s very-much-alive mother arrived at Craiglockhart herself, complaining that her son never writes or visits. Broadbent is going to be court-martialed. That night, Rivers awakens with sharp pain in his chest, which worries him. The next morning, after Bryce looks him over, they agree that Rivers is developing his own war neurosis and must take three weeks’ leave from the hospital to rest and recover his nerves.

Sassoon notes that Rivers is not at dinner again, nor has he been for several days, and he knows the doctor is due to go on leave. After dinner, Sassoon goes to Owen’s room to visit and see how the poetry is going. As they are speaking and writing, Sassoon hears a quiet but continuous tapping outside, though Owen cannot hear it. Back in his own room, as he tries to sleep, Sassoon still hears the quiet but distinct tapping. Waking in the middle of the night, Sassoon sees one of his former men standing silently in the corner of the room, even though he knows that man died months ago. Sassoon looks to the window and looks back; the man is gone.

Sassoon’s palms sweat and his heart pounds, even though this hallucination was far more dignified and peaceful than his past ones had been; no nightmares, no gore. He needs to speak with Rivers, but when morning comes, Sassoon discovers that Rivers left already on an early train. Sassoon wanders back upstairs, “unable to account for his sense of loss.” Rivers, he realizes, has entirely taken his father’s place within Sassoon’s mind. Although he knows Rivers will only be gone three weeks, his departure makes Sassoon feel just as he did when he was five years old and his father left him behind.