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
In their next session, Prior is bitter that Bryce has confined him to the hospital for a fortnight for missing the curfew and offending one of the head nurses. Rivers brushes the incident off, however. Prior doesn’t want to talk about dreams or memories, so instead they discuss why mutism such as his is rare for officers. Rivers explains that mutism or debilitating physical symptoms are far more common in enlisted men, who feel more powerless against their situation, so their body complies by removing their ability to speak up or stand or fight. Officers more commonly develop a stammer, though oddly enough, when Prior can speak he has no stammer at all. Prior points out it is interesting that Rivers stammers then, since he must be hiding something himself.
The notion that war neurosis and its physical debilitations are the mind’s way of counteracting inhospitable or dangerous situations suggests that mental breakdown is not entirely an illness, but in some measure a natural response to danger or overwhelming circumstances. The fact that Prior exhibits a symptom that normally denotes powerlessness suggests that he feels insecure about his authority as an officer and perhaps, as mentioned before, about his masculinity, which fellow officers have cast doubt upon.
Themes
After Prior leaves, Rivers is both amused and irritated by the accusation that Rivers is repressing something. He takes a walk across the hospital grounds and watches two men cutting grass with scythes. Though it seems arduous work, they both strip naked to the waist and begin playing in the newly-cut lawn, laughing with joy. However, Rivers spies a head administrator, and knows that they will be reprimanded, since no military official is allowed to remove any piece of clothing. The men put their shirts back on and continue their work, though much slower, and Rivers realizes, with less laughter.
Once again, nakedness is associated with a sense of vulnerability and in this case, playfulness, as it symbolizes the removal of the uniform which is associated with the social pretensions and expectations the two men feel to conform to society’s expectations of masculine soldiers. The lack of laughter Rivers notes after the men put their clothing back on suggests that men would be happier and freer unburdened by such expectations, metaphorically naked.
Themes
Late in the evening, while Rivers is doing paperwork in his office, Prior knocks and enters. The young man apologizes for his conduct that morning and admits that he has been lying all this time about his nightmares. Rivers observes that he is making progress, he’s recovered some memory and is rarely mute anymore, but Prior still seems bent on appearing offensive without actually ever having the gall to be so. Prior agrees with this, surprisingly, and admits that the nightmares are also getting worse, and they occasionally mix with sex dreams. He hints that he wakes up so revolted that he occasionally even feels suicidal.
Prior’s admission of weakness, that the nightmares are there and still terrible and that his hostile and offensive demeanor is a front, mark a major step in his character arc. It also suggests that he is beginning to trust Rivers enough to put down his masculine façade, which seems reinforced by the rejection he mentioned he’s received from fellow officers over not being manly enough. Once again, the connection between sex and violence appears, though Rivers makes no comment upon it.
Themes
Rivers agrees with this, noting that Prior seems depressed, and offers to finally give him hypnosis, if he wants it. Prior agrees, and they decide they will do it right now, though Rivers reassures Prior that if the experience is too painful, he’ll give him a sedative so Prior won’t have to face it until the next morning. Rivers guides Prior to focus on a pen, and then counts him down, off to sleep.
Rivers’s fear that Prior may be suicidal seems mixed with relief that Prior is finally putting down his mental defenses, letting the facade fall away. Rivers’s decision to perform hypnosis suggests that now that Prior is putting up less of a front, treatment may actually be possible.
Themes
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Hypnotized, Prior wakes in a dugout trench, back in France. It is morning. As he makes his way along, he passes two soldiers cooking breakfast in a skillet and kettle. After moving on a way, Prior hears the whistle of a shell overhead and ducks. The two men who’d been cooking breakfast are obliterated by the shell. Prior takes a shovel and scoops what shreds of flesh and splintered bone remain into a sack, fighting to keep himself from vomiting. Prior notices an eyeball staring up at him from the ground. He picks it up, shaking with fear, and says, “What am I supposed to do with this gob-stopper?” Prior’s mutism strikes him in that moment, his mouth simply stops functioning. When a friend brings Prior to a casualty clearing station, Prior feels his memory slipping away as well.
Prior’s experience is horrific, demonstrating the grotesque affair that war can be, rather than the glorious fight that young people often imagine it as. The fact that Prior calls his friend’s eyeball a “gob-stopper” suggests that his mind does not know how to cope with the terrible reality of what is happening in front of him, and instead he reaches for some external point of reference, such as seeing the body-part as a child’s candy. This is reinforced by the fact that, after he makes the statement, his mind stops processing the world around him altogether and removes his ability to speak.
Themes
When Prior comes to, he seems enraged, asking, “Is that all?” To Rivers, it seemed plenty traumatic. Rivers circles around the desk to offer Prior a handkerchief, but instead Prior grabs him by the arms and begins head-butting him in the chest, hard enough to hurt. Though it seems an attack, Rivers recognizes that this is the nearest Prior can come to asking for physical affection, so he lets it continue.
Prior’s inability to show or ask for physical affection, though he desperately needs comfort and physical contact, demonstrates the damage that society’s expectations of men and aversion to homosexuality have on male relationships. Prior cannot even hug Rivers, but instead has to mask his need for contact with masculine violence to make it permissible in his own mind.
Themes
Prior is still confused why this particular memory triggered his breakdown, but Rivers explains that war neurosis is not caused by one event, but by the “erosion” of the mind’s ability to handle trauma and grief. Prior still struggles to think of himself as someone who broke down; he thought he was tougher than that, but Rivers reassures him it can happen to anyone. He gives Prior a sedative and sends him to sleep.
Rivers goes up to his room, thinking about the eyeball in Prior’s hand, but he warns himself off it, realizing that he’ll need to take a medical leave if he keeps up. Prior disturbs him, though, not least because he reminds Rivers of another patient who saw deeper into Rivers than Rivers wanted him to: John Layard. And Layard’s treatment had been ultimately unsuccessful.
Although not stated explicitly, the fact that Layard’s psychiatric treatment was unsuccessful suggests that Layard eventually committed suicide. Rivers’s fear of being seen into is hypocritical, since that is exactly what he does to his patients.
Themes
Though many patients see Rivers as a sort of father-figure, Layard had called him a “male-mother,” in part because Layard had a bad relationship with his father and in part because Rivers is in a nurturing role, which is often considered feminine. Rivers, however, resented the idea that caring for someone is inherently womanly. All officers, he thought, have a motherly quality to them in the way that they fret and care for their soldiers. The great irony is that even the foot soldiers who enlist in the war seeking a masculine adventure find themselves sitting in trenches in “‘feminine’ passivity” waiting for something to happen to them. As Rivers drifts to sleep, he wishes that he were young enough to fight in France, rather than be at Craiglockhart.
Again, Rivers embodies character traits that are both masculine and feminine. He is himself a stoic individual and yet tremendously caring and nurturing. Rivers’s practice and characterization thus suggests that men can and should possess traits stereotypically masculine and feminine traits, which itself would suggest that society’s expectation that men be masculine and women be feminine ought to be reexamined. Once again, the novel suggests that war makes this even more apparent, as soldiers are placed in passive, almost domestic roles.
Themes
