Regeneration

by

Pat Barker

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Regeneration makes teaching easy.

Regeneration: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Rivers meets with Anderson, who recounts a nightmare about being tied up with a corset and thrown in a carriage and taken to see Rivers wearing a post-mortem apron, before he woke up vomiting. Rivers uses long silences to encourage Anderson to speak and draw some of his own conclusions, though Anderson is clearly uncomfortable. Slowly, Rivers pieces together that Anderson, a surgeon, is now so afraid of blood that it seems he won’t be able to practice medicine as a civilian any longer, even though that is his only way of supporting his family. He’d been working on the front, averaging ten amputations a day, when he’d suddenly collapsed on the floor in the middle of the ward “in a pool of piss.” As Rivers does his rounds, he worries for Anderson, fearing he may become suicidal.
Anderson’s loss of his professional capacity—since doctor who is afraid of blood certainly cannot function—demonstrates yet another horrible cost of war. Furthermore, his performance of ten amputations a day suggests the general trauma and grotesque suffering of the front. Anderson’s dream of being tied with women’s garments indicates that he feels emasculated, either by being stuck in Craiglockhart, losing his professional capacity, or by the confining, emasculating environment of the trenches on the front, which is explored later in the story.
Themes
Masculinity, Expectations, and Psychological Health Theme Icon
War, Duty, and Loyalty Theme Icon
Trauma and Mental Illness Theme Icon
Early in the morning, Graves and Sassoon go swimming together in the hospital pool, roughhousing and studying each others’ recent scars—Sassoon’s through his shoulder, Graves’s across his inner thigh, which makes Sassoon recall a young man in the bed next to his in the hospital when he was being treated for his shoulder. A bullet had torn through the young man’s penis, leaving nothing but a ragged hole. Sassoon “shut the lid on the memory,” and continues swimming with Graves until other people arrive, at which point they leave.
Sassoon and Graves’s scene in the pool has a tender, almost intimate undertone to it, suggesting that they are dear friends. Their ability to exhibit some level of tenderness—studying the scars on each other’s bodies—while they are alone suggests that male relationships can be much more tender and affectionate when removed from the public view or society’s expectations.
Themes
Masculinity, Expectations, and Psychological Health Theme Icon
War, Duty, and Loyalty Theme Icon
Male Relationships Theme Icon
Rivers meets with Sassoon later that morning, who seems in bright enough spirits, but when Sassoon jokes about being locked up in an asylum, Rivers very firmly states that Craiglockhart is not an asylum, and Sassoon is not caged here. The conversation wanders to Sassoon’s brother, who was killed in the war, and his father who left when he was five, then died when he was eight. Rivers rightly remarks that it must have felt like Sassoon lost his father twice.
Sassoon’s lack of a father figure is significant, as he will place Rivers—who is much older—in that same position (though without realizing it) for most of the story. Sassoon’s feeling like he lost his father twice foreshadows the loss of a second father he will feel when Rivers eventually leaves Craiglockhart.
Themes
Male Relationships Theme Icon
Sassoon goes on to explain that he went to Cambridge, but felt he couldn’t keep up and dropped out. He started spending his time hunting, playing cricket, and writing poetry, though he never felt that the hunting and cricketing part of him ever fit with the art and poetry-loving part. The army and the front felt like the only place he “ever really belonged,” which even led him to turn down a job training cadets at Cambridge. From this, Rivers surmises that Sassoon hates the thought of being safe while others are in danger and he promises Sassoon that if he maintains his protest, he’ll be trapped in safety for the rest of the war.
Sassoon’s conflicted combination of stereotypically masculine pursuits (hunting, cricket) and stereotypically effeminate pursuits (poetry, art) demonstrates the incongruence of society’s typical view of men. Sassoon is neither traditionally masculine nor traditionally feminine, but just a man who enjoys a number of things. Since he did not fit into either mold, Sassoon finds his sense of place and identity as a soldier, in combat.
Themes
Masculinity, Expectations, and Psychological Health Theme Icon
War, Duty, and Loyalty Theme Icon
Alienation vs. Belonging Theme Icon
Quotes
Get the entire Regeneration LitChart as a printable PDF.
Regeneration PDF
Burns stands in his room, looking at the gusting wind and rain outside. The hospital is worse when the weather is bad; everyone is cooped up and commiserating together. Although Burns rarely leaves the hospital, he summons the courage to venture out, taking a bus into the surrounding countryside and wandering up a hill into a copse of trees. The tree he stands under is covered with small dead animals, all tied with string and hanging in the air. At first he tries to run, until he remembers Rivers’ advice to turn and face his hallucinations. Burns returns to the tree, unties all the little corpses, arranging them in a circle on the ground so they can become part of the earth once again. Stripping naked, Burns lays himself in the middle of the circle, even as the air grows colder, and feels he is in his rightful place.
Burns’s hallucination is striking and somewhat disturbing, unique among most of the dreams and hallucinations in the story in that it remains un-interpreted. By stripping himself naked—which implies vulnerability and the removal of his defenses—and laying amidst the animals to sink into the ground, Burns seems to be expressing a desire to let go of his repression and his trauma-induced neurosis, which defend him from painful memories, and sink back into the earth to dissolve, disappear, and die. Burns does not seem overtly suicidal, but neither does he make any effort to protect his body from the cold.
Themes
Trauma and Mental Illness Theme Icon
Although patients are allowed to leave, Burns’s prolonged absence causes the doctors and nurses to fret, and Bryce and Rivers debate about calling the police. However, Burns arrives midway through the evening, covered in earth and twigs, shivering cold, and faint with hunger, but placid. One of the head nurses helps him undress and gets him into bed. She wants to scold him for the fright he caused, but seeing how tired he is, she instead loads him with blankets and hot water bottles and lets him sleep. When Burns wakes an hour later, he finds Rivers by his bedside, there to offer comfort and reassurance, and Burns realizes “he’d come back for this.”
Craiglockhart is almost always depicted as a kind and gentle place staffed by people who genuinely care for the patients there, which could explain why, though some part of Burns may wish to die, he is not actually suicidal—he appreciates the people around him too much. Craiglockhart being a place without major conflicts between characters shifts the main source of conflict to the war itself, which is the source of most people’s pain.
Themes
Masculinity, Expectations, and Psychological Health Theme Icon
War, Duty, and Loyalty Theme Icon
Male Relationships Theme Icon
Trauma and Mental Illness Theme Icon
Quotes