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
Rivers and Sassoon take tea together in Rivers’s office, and Rivers mentions that Captain Graves will join them in a few days. They speak amiably together—Sassoon is very decent, and hardly seems neurotic. They discuss the medical boards and the information Graves gave to Rivers, which is much more personal than Sassoon had expected. Sassoon admits that his objection to fighting is not religious at all, but that he just doesn’t hate the Germans anymore. He briefly did, one year ago after a friend was killed, and he started going on night raids trying to get himself killed or kill Germans. When Rivers remarks that taking unnecessary risks is an early sign of war neurosis, Sassoon seems surprised, but remarks that the most unnecessary risks he ever took were all under direct orders.
Rivers’s and Sassoon’s relationship begins with immediate mutual respect and rapport between the two men, setting the tone for their relationship. Although Rivers, as the main character, sits in the protagonist’s role and Sassoon, as the figure who opposes his ideals, in the antagonist’s role, the story has none of the common tropes of a noble character versus an ignoble character. Sassoon’s self-destructive impulse and demonstrated wish to die fits his desire to be a martyr, suggesting that such martyrdom is a mixture of bravery and suicidal impulse.
Themes
They speak briefly about Sassoon’s nightmares and hallucinations many months ago about corpses crawling across the ground, though Rivers does not seem to find them altogether worrying. They continue on to discuss Sassoon’s protest. Sassoon is not an outright pacifist, and he admits that it’s strange for a Second Lieutenant to protest a war, but he points out that he has more grounds to do so than the old men that keep the war running.
Significantly, the novel does not take an outright pacifist’s opposition to the war, but allows for nuance and the possibility that war may be a grim necessity at certain times. Sassoon’s position as both a protester and an excellent soldier are important to this end, demonstrating that one may be dutiful and honor-bound and still opposed to unnecessary slaughter.
Themes
When Rivers presses, Sassoon admits that the only hatred he feels now is towards civilians, since they don’t understand how awful the war is. Rivers surmises that it’s a good thing Sassoon made it through the first medical board without saying much, since they would have certified him as insane to shut him up. Rivers, however, does not think he is mad, nor that he has war neurosis. Sassoon had wondered if he was mad himself after the hallucinations, but since he was still writing poetry at the time, he assumed he could not be. If anything, Rivers says, Sassoon has a particular “anti-war neurosis.” Although, Rivers admits, it’s his duty as an officer to oppose Sassoon.
Sassoon’s hatred towards civilians demonstrates his alienation from society at large, outside of combat. This gives Sassoon’s character a tragic irony: he wants to see the war ended and everyone become civilians again, and yet he feels no sympathy or connection to civilian life itself. This is perhaps the reason Sassoon seems bent on death or imprisonment, since that way he could escape the horrors of the war without having to face the banality and ignorance of civilian life.
Themes
At dinner, Rivers and Bryce talk about Sassoon. Rivers cannot yet pinpoint anything wrong with the man and quite enjoyed meeting him. At a different table, Sassoon’s mind wanders until another patient, Ralph Anderson, asks him if he golfs, and suggests that they should begin playing together. Across the dining room, a very thin patient chokes and vomits on the floor until several VADs (voluntary civilian nurses) carry him away. Rivers excuses himself and follows after them, finding the nurses and the frail man, Burns, sitting on his bed while the nurses try to cheer him up by flirting with him.
The dining room exemplifies the peculiar nature of Craiglockhart as a collection of soldiers planted in the midst of the civilian world. Talk of golf intermingles with diagnoses and the effects of war trauma. The strange disparity between the two foreshadows the fact that, for many characters, the domesticity of life in Craiglockhart is comforting, but conflicts with their sense of duty and wish to rejoin the war.
Themes
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Rivers speaks with him, noting to himself that Burns is still rapidly losing weight and his bones show through his skin. He tells Burns he can eat in his room from now on if he likes. Burns states that he still has bad nightmares, and can’t bring himself to think about his trauma. After Rivers leaves, he reflects on Burns’s terrible case, which seems unwinnable to Rivers. It raises all sorts of questions that Rivers never wrestled with in Cambridge. While Burns was an officer in France, a shell had thrown him headfirst into the belly of a rotting corpse, and his nose and mouth were filled with decomposing human flesh, leaving him unable to eat anything at all without immediately vomiting. Graves arrives.
Burns is the most traumatized and tragic character in the story, demonstrating the full extent of the damage war trauma can leave upon one’s mind and the debilitations it can produce. Likewise, Burns’s traumatic event is incredibly disturbing, emphasizing the horrors of warfare which will feature as common sub-theme throughout the story and provide a natural counter-argument to the justice or goodness of war.
Themes
