Also called “shell shock in World War I, war neurosis is used as a general term to describe the various psychological ailments affecting soldiers during wartime, especially when those ailments cause mental breakdown or debilitating physical symptoms such as blindness, mutism, deafness, stuttering speech, memory loss, or even physical paralysis.
War Neurosis Quotes in Regeneration
The Regeneration quotes below are all either spoken by War Neurosis or refer to War Neurosis. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2
Quotes
“What’s an ‘unnecessary risk’ anyway? The maddest thing I ever did was done under orders.”
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Chapter 13
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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.
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War Neurosis Term Timeline in Regeneration
The timeline below shows where the term War Neurosis appears in Regeneration. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
...or kill Germans. When Rivers remarks that taking unnecessary risks is an early sign of war neurosis , Sassoon seems surprised, but remarks that the most unnecessary risks he ever took were...
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...shut him up. Rivers, however, does not think he is mad, nor that he has war neurosis . Sassoon had wondered if he was mad himself after the hallucinations, but since he...
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Chapter 9
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...
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Chapter 13
...next morning, after Bryce looks him over, they agree that Rivers is developing his own war neurosis and must take three weeks’ leave from the hospital to rest and recover his nerves.
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Chapter 20
...the sky, trapped while enemy soldiers shot at them. To Rivers, confinement leading to greater war neurosis confirms his theory that women suffer greater levels of hysteria during peacetime, when they are...
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