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 meets with Prior again, who smokes even though he’s just been released from sick bay due to his asthma. However, Prior is more willing to speak about his service this time, and he recalls the insanity of trench warfare and the grim task of being an officer, leading troops into suicidal charges across No Man’s Land, the open territory dividing enemy trenches. However, despite the terror, Prior also admits that there was something “sexy” to it. Though he recalls the memories, Prior knowingly keeps himself distant from them, refusing to feel any emotions attached. Rivers tries to get Prior to reconnect emotionally, but he realizes that he would handle the situation in exactly the same way if he were the patient. Once Prior reaches the end of his memory, however, he once again becomes combative.
Prior’s willingness to speak more openly after his physical ailment suggests that the weakness he was forced to show has helped in breaking down his mental defenses. The mental association between sex and violence is mentioned briefly by multiple characters throughout the story, though the connection is never explored. It seems to be a reference to Sigmund Freud, oft regarded as the father of psychoanalysis and a major contributor to psychiatry, who believed that sexual desire underlies almost every emotion and action in some way.
Themes
While Sassoon is in his room, cleaning his golf clubs, a young man nervously enters, carrying 5 copies of Sassoon’s published poetry. Owen introduces himself as a fan, though he has a bad stammer, and asks Sassoon if he might sign the copies, which are for himself and his family members. Sassoon is happy to do so, and the two chat amiably, though Owen is still nervous. The visitor tells Sassoon that he completely agrees with his declaration and quite likes his poetry. Owen quotes several lines of it, and notably never stammers while quoting.
Although Owen is a minor character, he functions as Sassoon’s primary friend throughout the story (since Graves is rarely present and Rivers is more of a father figure). Their friendship models male relationships, including the difficulties of navigating such a relationship in a society that tends to discourage affection or tenderness between men.
Themes
They chat about the war and religion—Sassoon is a skeptic, while Owen wants to be a Christian but feels he can’t be if he participates in the war, since real Christianity would seem to demand pacifism. Both sensing that the conversation is delving into more intimate territory than either intended, Owen stands to leave, but first asks if Sassoon might contribute some poetry to the hospital magazine, which Owen edits. Sassoon promises he will, but only if Owen will also share some of his own, since he is himself a writer.
Owen raises an important point about the hypocrisy of institutional Christianity in its embrace of warfare, patriotism, and nationalism, since it would seem to contradict Christianity’s base ethic. Religious hypocrisy in wartime surfaces several times as a minor theme throughout the story, but is not explored very thoroughly.
Themes
In the golf club’s bar, Anderson mumbles an apology to Sassoon; when he lost the game, he’d been so enraged that he’d threatened to hit Sassoon with his club, though Sassoon managed to laugh it off. As a rule, the two men only ever speak of golf, fearful of the intimacy that any further conversation would require, such as the real reason for their being in Craiglockhart or Anderson’s fear of blood. Sassoon remarks that they’ll miss their game tomorrow morning, since Anderson’s wife is due to arrive, but Anderson responds that she had to cancel, so they’ll still be able to play.
Once again, both men’s fear of intimacy with each other reflects the societal expectation that men remain stoic and not share or express their feelings or vulnerabilities. Such an expectation obviously limits the depth that any male relationship can have, because as Sassoon and Anderson experience, all that is left to bond over are such superficial issues as golf.
Themes
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In a little café in Edinburgh, Prior eats a plate of fish and chips quickly, both because he is hungry and because he can sense that, as an officer, he’s unwelcome in such a place. Four women sit at the table next to him: Lizzie, Betty, Sarah, and Madge. Lizzie, the oldest (in her mid-thirties), is telling dirty stories to the others. Sarah strikes up conversation with Prior, telling him to slow his eating down. The two flirt before Sarah agrees to go have a drink with Prior, though she makes him tell her his first name, Billy, first.
It is significant that Sarah approaches Prior, rather than the other way around, suggesting that Sarah is the more self-assured between them. First names are rarely used in the story and always denote a level of personal intimacy and vulnerability, and thus Sarah’s demand that Prior give her his first name suggests that she’ll only be with him if he will begin to open himself up to her.
Themes
Billy and Sarah find a hotel bar to drink in, where Billy learns that Sarah is not from Edinburgh but came to work in a factory, making detonators. She works 70 hour weeks, but makes five times as much money here as she did before the war. Billy is intrigued by Sarah’s confidence, and he reflects that it seems that women have “expanded in all kinds of ways” over the course of the war while men have “shrunk into a smaller and smaller space.” Sarah reveals she once had a boyfriend, in her hometown, but he was killed in the war by “our gas.” The thought that his own army had killed him bothered her so much that Sarah convinced Betty to leave town with her, where they landed in Edinburgh.
Although femininity and the role of women is not explored nearly as much as masculinity and men’s place in society, the novel does occasionally explore the contrast, specifically pointing out how the roles reverse in wartime: women become more confident as they are left to operate the country, while men become more passive as they are forced to follow orders regardless of how nonsensical they may be. Sarah embodies this newfound confidence and independence available to woman as a result of the war.
Themes
They leave the hotel, drunk, wandering through the city together until the make their way into a church’s graveyard. Billy pulls Sarah close, gets her shirt unbuttoned and tries to have sex with her until she stops him. They sit together and chat for a while. Billy tries to make love to Sarah again, but she rebuffs him again, and though he’s frustrated he feels he’ll get there eventually. They button up, make their way back to her lodgings, and Billy bids her goodnight, asking if they might see each other again. Sarah says she would like to, and goes inside. Prior realizes that this late at night, the gates at Craiglockhart are already locked.
Sarah’s refusal of Billy’s attempts for sex, which seem to surprise him, again nods to the growing agency and self-confidence of women during wartime, since Sarah feels powerful enough to set her own personal boundaries. By saying no to him, she forces Billy to not act in the traditionally masculine, domineering and dominating manner, but to respect her power to decide what she wants and what she does not. This is significant, particularly for the era, when women had much less agency than today.
Themes
