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 visits a new patient, Second Lieutenant Prior, who has developed mutism and only communicates by writing on a notepad. Though Prior is silent during the day, he screams through most nights, preventing his roommate from having any sleep. Rivers introduces himself and tries to get an idea of Prior’s history, since his medical file has not arrived. However, Prior, laying in bed, is antagonistic at every point, and soon rolls over, refusing to communicate any more.
As a character, Prior is one of the few truly antagonistic people in the story. Though Rivers’s and Sassoon’s goals are fundamentally opposed, Prior is interpersonally hostile, making him rather unique among patients. However, this hostility is used to explore the pressure of society’s masculine expectations upon men.
Themes
Graves and Sassoon sit together in a pub, while Graves expresses his annoyance that Sassoon looks down on other people with mental breakdowns, until Sassoon admits that most of his annoyance is based in fear that he’ll become one of them. The two leave the pub and embrace before Graves begins his journey back to his post. Alone, Sassoon decides to walk through the cold night air back through the city to Craiglockhart, realizing that he hates every civilian he sees; the only person not to perturb him is a young soldier on leave. Sassoon thinks about Rivers’s observation that Sassoon hates the feeling of safety, but he thinks privately that this comfort will destroy his spirit, even though he also feels a “pure joy” each night he goes to sleep, knowing that he will still be alive when he wakes.
Once again, Sassoon admits that Craiglockhart causes him real fear, even though his military record suggests a particular level of fearlessness in combat, which suggests that having his mental health challenged is more frightening than risking his physical safety. He is also notably concerned about the risk that comfort and safety may pose to his rebellious spirit, as though civilian life might change him for the worse. Sassoon and Graves’s embrace seems natural and comfortable for them, demonstrating that they have no qualms about showing each other physical affection in public. This is unique among most male relationships in the story and significant, since even Sassoon will struggle to show such affection later on.
Themes
Rivers sits naked on his bed, waiting for his evening bath to fill up, angered by the constant stress and trials at Craiglockhart. Currently, he’s trying to figure out how to arrange patients with roommates who so often succumb to night terrors and screaming. As he bathes, he thinks of Sassoon’s declaration that supporting the war is a selfish action, but he imagines if that were truly so, Rivers, too, would rather let the next generation have this war so he could return to his research at Cambridge. Rivers falls asleep, waking the next morning and instinctively reaching for his arm to check for blood. Finding it dry, he realizes it was only a dream, but a vivid one.
Again, nakedness symbolizes a level of vulnerability and the ability to exist without defenses or masking one’s feelings. For Rivers, the fact that he is naked alone, and only thinks freely, alone in his room, suggests that he does not possess any relationships (at least in Craiglockhart) in which he feels safe enough to be completely free and vulnerable. This vulnerability is demonstrated by Rivers’s anger, which he never allows himself to feel while he is on duty or around his peers.
Themes
Rivers takes a notepad and writes that he dreamt about his work with Dr. Head at St. John’s, testing nerve sensitivity on Head’s arm with a pin. Head cries in pain, but Rivers knows he must continue, until Head exclaims, “Why don’t you try it?” and grabs a scalpel, drawing a six-inch incision down Rivers’ arm. Rivers had awakened at that point, but as he analyses the dream, he remembers that it was very close to the actual events. In Cambridge, Rivers and Head studied nerve regeneration by intentionally severing Head’s radial nerve in one arm so he could observe the painful process by which the nerves were rebuilt. Part of that involved Rivers jabbing his arm with a pin, which caused Head extreme pain and distressed Rivers, though both men were certain that they should continue the study.
Rivers’s dream of his work with Head encapsulates the the major themes and flow of the novel, explaining why the book is named after the process they studied. The story explores not only the process by which individuals heal from mental trauma, but also the pain such a process involves, as well as the changes that result when something is broken and then rebuilt. This particularly foreshadows Rivers’s own gradual shift, as his relationship with Sassoon becomes the catalyst for him to reexamine many foundational beliefs about war, loyalty, and even his psychiatric practice.
Themes
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Rivers recognizes that the dream is about his own ethical conflicts around treating his patients. His method of treatment—which, though successful, is still also experimental—involves coaching patients to recall their trauma rather than bury it. Therefore, he asks them to confront whatever caused them to break down—though for patients such as Burns, Rivers wonders if the pain involved will “be too great.” Even in more standard patients, coaxing soldiers to explore their feelings and admit their fear and grief goes against all their notions of masculinity that they’ve been raised with, since they’ve been taught that to be anything less than stoic is to be weak. Rivers has spent his adult life repressing “emotion and desire.” For a soldier to come to be able to express such feelings, he needs to “redefine[e] what it meant to be a man.”
Rivers consciously breaks society’s mold for what an ideal man should be, since he does not explicitly embody the masculine ideals of stoicism, power, and domination. Rivers’s methods and justification of a more stereotypically feminine exploration of feelings are thus the central point of the novel’s argument that society should redefine what manhood is with less emphasis on stereotypically masculine traits and with a broader understanding of what men can be, regardless of whether that seems masculine or effeminate. The novel suggests that this will lead to healthier, saner individuals and even better soldiers.
Themes
