William Rivers Character Analysis in Regeneration

Rivers is the protagonist of the novel. Rivers is a psychiatrist from Cambridge, though he serves at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, treating officers who are suffering from war neurosis. Although Rivers has spent most of his life as staunch conservative and in support of war, especially World War I, his views are challenged by the arrival of conscientious objector and decorated officer Siegfried Sassoon, who is sent to Rivers so that Rivers can either declare him insane and discredit him, or convince him to return to combat. Although Rivers develops a fatherly—or even motherly, as his method of therapy is very nurturing and admittedly un-masculine—relationship with many of his patients, he becomes particularly fond of Sassoon and finds himself conflicted about trying to conquer Sassoon’s anti-war complex. Rivers’s sympathy for Sassoon and his anti-war ideals increases throughout the novel, coming to a head when Rivers watches another of his patients, David Burns, have yet another severe mental breakdown as a result of his war trauma. Observing Burns’s terror and reflecting on how the war has shattered any hope Burns had of a normal life, Rivers decides that nothing, not war or honor or duty, could possibly justify that level of suffering, especially on a man only in his early-twenties. Along with his budding pacifism, Rivers also disagrees with society’s view of masculinity and manhood. While he does not desire to make his patients emasculated or effeminate, he sincerely believes that helping them to feel such (stereotypically feminine) emotions as fear and tenderness not only helps them recover from traumatic stress, but also makes them more psychologically durable soldiers. Rivers thus embodies stereotypically feminine qualities—nurturing, tenderness, patience—in a character who is no less a man for it, arguing thus that society should redefine its idea of manhood and base it less on narrow stereotypically masculine character traits.

William Rivers Quotes in Regeneration

The Regeneration quotes below are all either spoken by William Rivers or refer to William Rivers. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Masculinity, Expectations, and Psychological Health Theme Icon

“What’s an ‘unnecessary risk’ anyway? The maddest thing I ever did was done under orders.”

Related Characters: Siegfried Sassoon (speaker), William Rivers

Page Number and Citation: 12

Explanation and Analysis:

“I mean, there was the riding, hunting, cricketing me, and then there was the…other side…that was interested in poetry and music, and things like that. And I didn’t seem able to…” He laced his fingers. “Knot them together.”

Related Characters: Siegfried Sassoon (speaker), William Rivers

Page Number and Citation: 35

Explanation and Analysis:

“I’ve worried everybody, haven’t I?”

“Never mind that. You’re back, that’s all that matters.”

All the way back to the hospital Burns had kept asking himself why he was going back, Now, waking up to find Rivers sitting by his bed, unaware of being observed, tired and patient, he’d realized he’d come back for this.

Related Characters: David Burns (speaker), William Rivers (speaker)

Page Number and Citation: 40

Explanation and Analysis:

They’d been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness. Men who broke down, or cried, or admitted to feeling fear, were sissies, weaklings, failures. Not men. […] Fear, tenderness—these emotions were so despised that they could be admitted into consciousness only at the cost of redefining what it meant to be a man.

Related Characters: William Rivers

Page Number and Citation: 48

Explanation and Analysis:

“If I were going to call myself a Christian, I’d have to call myself a pacifist as well. I don’t think it’s possible to call yourself a C-Christian and… j-just leave out the awkward bits.”

Related Characters: Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, William Rivers

Page Number and Citation: 83

Explanation and Analysis:

“You’re thinking of breakdown as a reaction to a single traumatic event, but it’s not like that. It’s more a matter of … erosion. Weeks and months of stress in a situation where you can’t get away from it.

Related Characters: William Rivers (speaker), Billy Prior

Page Number and Citation: 105

Explanation and Analysis:

[Rivers] distrusted the implication that nurturing, even when done by a man, remains female, as if the ability were borrowed, or even stolen from women […] If that were true, then there really was very little hope.

Related Characters: William Rivers, Billy Prior

Page Number and Citation: 107

Explanation and Analysis:

Everywhere saurian heads and necks peered out of winged armchairs, looking at the young man [Sassoon] with the automatic approval his uniform evoked, and then—or was he perhaps being oversensitive?—with a slight ambivalence, a growing doubt, as they worked out what they blue badge on his tunic meant.

Related Characters: Siegfried Sassoon, William Rivers

Page Number and Citation: 113

Explanation and Analysis:

“It makes it difficult to go on, you know. When things like this keep happening to people you know and and …love. To go on with the protest, I mean.”

Related Characters: Siegfried Sassoon (speaker), William Rivers

Page Number and Citation: 118

Explanation and Analysis:

Rivers got up and went across to the window. He found a bumble bee, between the curtain and the window, batting itself against the glass, fetched a file from the desk and, using it as a barrier, guided the insect into the open air. He watched it fly away.

Related Characters: William Rivers, David Burns

Page Number and Citation: 132

Explanation and Analysis:

“When all this is over, people who didn’t go to France, or didn’t do well in France—people of my generation, I mean—aren’t going to count for anything. This is the Club to end all Clubs.”

Related Characters: Billy Prior (speaker), William Rivers

Page Number and Citation: 135

Explanation and Analysis:

[Sassoon had] joked once or twice to Rivers about being his father confessor, but only now, faced with this second abandonment, did he realize how completely Rivers had come to take his father’s place. Well, that didn’t matter, did it? After all, if it came to substitute fathers, he might do a lot worse.

Related Characters: Siegfried Sassoon, William Rivers

Page Number and Citation: 145

Explanation and Analysis:

The bargain, Rivers thought, looking at Abraham and Isaac. The one on which all patriarchal societies are founded. If you, who are young and strong, will obey me, who am old and weak, even to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice your life, then in the course of time you will peacefully inherit, and be able to exact the same obedience from your sons.

Related Characters: William Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon

Page Number and Citation: 149

Explanation and Analysis:

Rivers thought how misleading it was to say that the war had “matured” these young men. It wasn’t true of his patients, and it certainly wasn’t true of Burns, in whom a prematurely aged man and fossilizes schoolboy seemed to exist side by side.

Related Characters: William Rivers, David Burns

Page Number and Citation: 169

Explanation and Analysis:

[Burns’s] body felt like a stone. Rivers got hold of him and held him, coaxing, rocking. He looked up at the tower that loomed squat and menacing above them, and thought, Nothing justifies this. Nothing nothing nothing

Related Characters: William Rivers, David Burns

Page Number and Citation: 180

Explanation and Analysis:

At the moment you hate me because I’ve been instrumental in getting you something you’re ashamed of wanting. I can’t do much about the hatred, but I do think you should look at the shame. Because it’s not really anything to be ashamed of, is it? Wanting to stay alive? You’d be a very strange sort of animal if you didn’t.

Related Characters: William Rivers (speaker), Billy Prior

Page Number and Citation: 209

Explanation and Analysis:

“You will leave this room when you are speaking normally. I know you do not want the treatment suspended now that you are making such progress. You are a noble fellow and these ideas which come into your mind and make you want to leave me do not represent your true self.”

Related Characters: Lewis Yealland (speaker), Callan, William Rivers

Page Number and Citation: 232

Explanation and Analysis:

Just as Yealland silenced the unconscious protest of his patients by removing the paralysis, the deafness, the blindness, the muteness that stood between them and the war, so, in an infinitely more gentle way, [Rivers] silenced his patients, for the stammerings, the nightmares, the tremors, the memory lapses of officers were just as much unwitting protests as the grosser maladies of men.

Related Characters: William Rivers, Lewis Yealland

Related Symbols: The Horse’s Bit

Page Number and Citation: 238

Explanation and Analysis:

Now, in middle age, the sheer extent of mess seemed to be forcing [Rivers] into conflict with the authorities over a very wide range of issues…medical, military. Whatever. A society that devours its own young deserves no automatic or unquestioning allegiance.

Related Characters: William Rivers

Page Number and Citation: 249

Explanation and Analysis:

William Rivers Character Timeline in Regeneration

The timeline below shows where the character William Rivers appears in Regeneration. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

In an office, Rivers and Bryce read the declaration and discuss the nature of the man who wrote it.... (full context)

Rivers sits in his office, reading an honorable citation given to Sassoon for single-handedly recovering the... (full context)

Rivers and Sassoon take tea together in Rivers’s office, and Rivers mentions that Captain Graves will... (full context)

...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.... (full context)

When Rivers presses, Sassoon admits that the only hatred he feels now is towards civilians, since they... (full context)

At dinner, Rivers and Bryce talk about Sassoon. Rivers cannot yet pinpoint anything wrong with the man and... (full context)

Rivers speaks with him, noting to himself that Burns is still rapidly losing weight and his... (full context)

...his guest room, remarking that he hates it here at Craiglockhart. Later, Graves meets with Rivers to discuss Sassoon and vouch for his character, saying that Sassoon is the best platoon... (full context)

Graves leaves, and Rivers reads through three poems that Sassoon gave to him, which he wrote while he was... (full context)

Rivers meets with Anderson, who recounts a nightmare about being tied up with a corset and... (full context)

Rivers meets with Sassoon later that morning, who seems in bright enough spirits, but when Sassoon... (full context)

...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... (full context)

...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... (full context)

Rivers visits a new patient, Second Lieutenant Prior, who has developed mutism and only communicates by... (full context)

...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... (full context)

Rivers sits naked on his bed, waiting for his evening bath to fill up, angered by... (full context)

Rivers takes a notepad and writes that he dreamt about his work with Dr. Head at... (full context)

Rivers recognizes that the dream is about his own ethical conflicts around treating his patients. His... (full context)

Rivers meets with Prior, who regained his voice in the midst of one of his nightmares.... (full context)

Rivers meets with Sassoon and they discuss the young officer’s interactions with pacifism. Despite what Graves... (full context)

Though Rivers intends to spend the afternoon on paperwork, Prior’s father arrives at Craiglockhart unannounced. Prior’s father... (full context)

...to teach him to reach for a better life for himself and consider himself dignified. Rivers gathers that Prior both loves and resents his mother’s encouragement and mentoring. (full context)

After Prior’s mother leaves, “Captain” Broadbent (who is a doctor) arrives—Rivers resents any of the doctors there, including himself, being referred to as officers as if... (full context)

...while most of the patients are watching a Charlie Chaplin film in a screening room, Rivers finds Prior alone in a dark sitting room, white knuckled and wheezing. Prior mentions that... (full context)

Rivers sits with Prior in his room again that morning. Prior resents the fact that the... (full context)

Rivers tries to bring up the nightmares again, but Prior refuses to talk about them, insisting... (full context)

Rivers meets with Sassoon in his office. Sassoon’s declaration has made the paper, but he’d rather... (full context)

Rivers writes his report on Sassoon, describing how he joined the army in 1914 and rose... (full context)

...leave, though nobody believes he is going to see his mother. Brock, another officer, prompts Rivers to speak about Sassoon, since his name was in the paper this week. Rivers announces... (full context)

Rivers meets with Prior again, who smokes even though he’s just been released from sick bay... (full context)

...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... (full context)

After Prior leaves, Rivers is both amused and irritated by the accusation that Rivers is repressing something. He takes... (full context)

Late in the evening, while Rivers is doing paperwork in his office, Prior knocks and enters. The young man apologizes for... (full context)

Rivers agrees with this, noting that Prior seems depressed, and offers to finally give him hypnosis,... (full context)

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... (full context)

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... (full context)

Rivers goes up to his room, thinking about the eyeball in Prior’s hand, but he warns... (full context)

Though many patients see Rivers as a sort of father-figure, Layard had called him a “male-mother,” in part because Layard... (full context)

Rivers tends to a new patient named Willard, an officer with a newly-developed paralysis in his... (full context)

Sassoon sits at a table in the Conservative Club, waiting to meet Rivers for dinner. Though he is grateful to be away from Craiglockhart’s cafeteria, the civilians rouse... (full context)

Rivers arrives, and as Sassoon pores over the menu, Rivers reflects that his life would be... (full context)

Rivers leaves the club alone an hour later, contemplating how a young soldier’s life is much... (full context)

Rivers recommends Burns for “unconditional discharge” from the military on account of his mental state. During... (full context)

Rivers visits Prior in the sick bay yet again, since he passed out on the train... (full context)

While Rivers is shaving in his room, a nurse bangs on his door and tells him that... (full context)

The rest of Rivers’s day consists of back-to-back meetings with fussy patients, administrative meetings, and a short conversation with... (full context)

Sassoon notes that Rivers is not at dinner again, nor has he been for several days, and he knows... (full context)

...than his past ones had been; no nightmares, no gore. He needs to speak with Rivers, but when morning comes, Sassoon discovers that Rivers left already on an early train. Sassoon... (full context)

Rivers sits in a church, listening to the congregants sing a hymn while he gazes at... (full context)

Rivers is staying on his brother’s chicken farm with Charles and his wife Bertha. The farm... (full context)

Much of the furniture in Charles’s house is from their childhood home in Knowles Bank. Rivers thinks back to his father, who was a speech therapist. Mostly, Rivers remembers their house... (full context)

Rivers looks at the unfinished letter to Sassoon on the table. All he’d managed to do... (full context)

In the same hospital, Prior is having his lungs re-examined, although the physician Rivers had called already checked them once. The current doctor obviously believes that Prior’s psychiatric condition... (full context)

Rivers walks down a country road with Head’s wife Ruth, as she tells him about what... (full context)

That evening, after dinner, when Rivers speaks of missing London, Head tells Rivers that there is a job in London waiting... (full context)

Rivers arrives in Burns’s seaside town, Aldeburgh. They meet on the train platform and take a... (full context)

The next morning, Rivers finds Burns in the kitchen. He still does not eat, and Rivers is unsure whether... (full context)

That evening, Rivers stokes the fire and steps out to buy biscuits to have with their evening tea,... (full context)

...out living, working, dating, but instead he is here, hiding in this house. Even so, Rivers is impressed that Burns has good relationships with the locals here, especially since many of... (full context)

...noon the next day, having been kept up by night terrors the night before, so Rivers works on his paper through the morning. Outside, a storm is slowly gathering. After Burns... (full context)

Rivers wakes to a sound he first thinks is an explosion, but after hearing it again,... (full context)

Rivers helps Burns home and puts him in bed, then goes to the butcher to buy... (full context)

...curved around him—he was never touched—but his breakdown occurred all the same. As they talk, Rivers feels for the first time that Burns may have some chance at recovery, at leading... (full context)

When Rivers arrives back at Craiglockhart, he finds several patients including Sassoon playing soccer in a ward... (full context)

Later, Sassoon tells Rivers about his new hallucination of the man in his room and the tapping he hears... (full context)

...announces that he’s started writing to a girl. The friend, however, is being sent to Rivers “to be cured,” which deeply unsettles Sassoon. (full context)

The night before Sassoon’s board examination, Rivers visits him in his room. Sassoon is visibly upset and dispirited, and admits he misses... (full context)

With tension growing, Rivers encourages Sassoon to keep his head down so someone doesn’t use his sexuality to discredit... (full context)

...examination board, determining whether he is fit to go to France. Watching his nervous antics, Rivers realizes that although Prior wants to return to France, some part of him also wants... (full context)

After several more examinations—none of them Sassoon’s—Rivers visits Prior in his room. The young man’s swollen eyes indicate that he’s been crying.... (full context)

Rivers, eating dinner with the other officers, is restless. He worries that Sassoon has actually deserted,... (full context)

Bryce has already left Craiglockhart, and Rivers is due to leave on November 14. His last days are more dramatic than he... (full context)

On his last day, Rivers visits Sassoon, who sits on the floor in the middle of his room, staring at... (full context)

Rivers moves to work with the RFC alongside Head in Cambridge. There are air raids periodically... (full context)

The day before Rivers is due back at Craiglockhart for Sassoon’s examination board, he is invited to visit the... (full context)

In the next ward, they find the man with the bent back, whom Rivers learns was half-buried by an explosion in this position for several days. Yealland assumes a... (full context)

Yealland shows Rivers a young man named Callan, struck with neurotic mutism just like Prior. When Rivers asks... (full context)

That afternoon, Rivers sits in a viewing room attached to an empty operating room. Yealland has drawn the... (full context)

That evening, Rivers tries to write a paper but cannot; images from the afternoon’s treatment swirl through his... (full context)

Rivers sets about analyzing the dream, which feels pointedly self-accusatory. The deformed man seems to him... (full context)

Rivers meets with Head, who tries to convince him that all this self-accusation is insane; Rivers... (full context)

When Head remarks that Rivers seems changed, Rivers agrees, and recounts how, after an anthropological trip to the Solomon Islands,... (full context)

Rivers returns quietly to Craiglockhart for the board examinations. Anderson is up, but Rivers worries about... (full context)

During Sassoon’s board, Rivers worries that Bryce’s replacement may cause disruption, since he asks if Sassoon will try to... (full context)

Sassoon comes to say goodbye to Rivers, informing him that he’ll spend a few days in London to meet the other psychiatrist... (full context)

Rivers sits at his desk and considers how strange that he, who changes minds for a... (full context)

Regeneration

William Rivers Character Analysis

William Rivers Quotes in Regeneration

Chapter 2 Quotes

Chapter 4 Quotes

Chapter 6 Quotes

Chapter 8 Quotes

Chapter 9 Quotes

Chapter 10 Quotes

Chapter 13 Quotes

Chapter 14 Quotes

Chapter 15 Quotes

Chapter 19 Quotes

Chapter 21 Quotes

Chapter 22 Quotes

Chapter 23 Quotes

William Rivers Character Timeline in Regeneration