Regeneration

by

Pat Barker

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

William Rivers Character Analysis

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
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

“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: 12
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“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: 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: William Rivers (speaker), David Burns (speaker)
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

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: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“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: William Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“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: 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: 107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

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: William Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon
Page Number: 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: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

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: 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: 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: William Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

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: 149
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

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: 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: 180
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

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: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“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), William Rivers, Callan
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

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: 238
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

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: 249
Explanation and Analysis:
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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
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

“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: 12
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“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: 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: William Rivers (speaker), David Burns (speaker)
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

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: 48
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“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: William Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“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: 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: 107
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

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: William Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon
Page Number: 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: 118
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

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: 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: 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: William Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

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: 149
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

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: 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: 180
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

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: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“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), William Rivers, Callan
Page Number: 232
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

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: 238
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

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: 249
Explanation and Analysis: