Mind War In Regeneration

Siegfried Sassoon and Sarah Lumb in Pat Barker’s Regeneration (1991) exemplify the bravery of those fighting against gender norms during the First World War. Sassoon proves his bravery by writing to protest the war to his military superiors and the broader public. Sarah courageously goes against her society’s and her mother’s gender norms by taking on a more masculine role. Sarah is sexually independent in her relationship with Billy Prior by behaving as an equal as opposed to playing the passive feminine role. She does not wait for her mother’s approval of Prior, and is eager to enjoy the independence women’s war work offers. Sarah worked at a munition factory being paid for manual labor. She is not intimidated by those trying to control her, but instead courageously takes on a more masculine role. Sassoon also challenges gender expectations by writing about the emotional traumas of war, as well as by discreetly exploring his own sexuality, opening himself up to criticisms of feminine weakness. Though his unconventional acts led to accusations of mental illness, Sassoon courageously refuses the opportunity to retain his reputation for a more conventional masculinity and openly demonstrates his weakness and emotions to the public. Though Sassoon and Sarah are seemingly safe at home and even oppose the war, they both demonstrate a new kind of bravery by resisting gender norms in the face of social opposition in

An American machine gunner, Charles Yale Harrison, says in his novel, Generals Die in Bed: “[War] take[s] everything from us: our lives, our blood, our hearts; even the few lousy hours of rest, they take those, too. Our job is to give, and theirs is to take,” (Harrison, 26). In this example, Harrison explains how war is the most selfish and strongest of all evils; war continues to take everything someone has until they have nothing left to take. The war also created long-term effects for soldiers; one being shell-shock. This term is used to describe the damage of constant loud shelling during war which greatly affected those who were not exposed to shelling frequently (Unnamed). Another term that is still used today is PTSD, (“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder”), which is used to describe the effect war had on the soldiers afterward (Unnamed). World War I brought major psychological disorders upon the soldiers during and after the war had ended leading to great damage for the rest of the victim’s

War can destroy a man both in body and mind for the rest of his life. In “The Sniper,” Liam O’Flaherty suggests the horror of war not only by presenting its physical dangers, but also by showing its psychological effects. We are left to wonder which has the longer lasting effect—the visible physical scars or the ones on the inside?

War often has drastic and lasting effects on individuals; the violence and horror ages soldiers mentally and physically. World War I was a violent and distressing war; men came home with mental illnesses and never were fully able to sink back into society. Through these lasting effects common civilians with no affiliation were unaware to the consequences. In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Remarque investigates the damaging effects of war on an individual’s identity using Paul Bäumer as a representation for all soldiers; he draws specific attention to the continuing loss of purpose and ability to relate to the rest of society.

Over the past few decades, the war changed everyone’s perspective. According to NCBI, 61% civilians suffer from psychological disorders caused by wars. Specifically, two books, Night and Persepolis, talks about the author experiences during the war and their struggles. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, documents his childhood when he was maltreated by the Nazis, and Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, share her experiences during the Iraq-Iran war of how it change her. War changes childhood because of near-death experiences, family departure, and witness horrific acts of violence.

Even though soldiers are able to distract themselves from the horrors that they witness on the front, war psychologically damages them and creates the “lost generation”. The young men find it increasingly difficult to think and act with the mindset of a civilian. In war, the men only experience despair, death, and fear, so their mind is enveloped by negative thoughts that

Scarred By War Post traumatic stress consists of having unwanted memories or nightmares. Many of which, soldiers of war experience after long years of the brutal life. Ishmael Beah is a 12 year-old boy living in Sierra Leone in the 1990’s. Ishmael shares his experience as a boy soldier in his book

They try to build a new life, but memories from the war are still strongly obvious to them. Through the feeling of embarrassment inside the soldier, O’Brien has depicted the post-war effects of the

War can caused many people depression, trauma, disabilities, or even long lasting injuries. The book I will be referring to is called A Long Way Gone “Ishmael Beah”. In Sierra Leone there was a civil war between the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) and government soldiers. Many people in this country were attacked and killed while teens and kids were taken to be soldiers. The book is about a boy named Ishmael Beah and his experience in the war. While looking for his family he is captured by the government to become a soldier and fight against the RUF. Ishmael was both a victim and a victimizer because he had been influenced by government soldiers to do terrible things, and aided them in the fight and killed many people.

The Mental Aftermath Thrown into a war, they didn’t chose, many young men came home with a different mentality. In the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, Tim tells about how the Vietnam war affected many young soldiers. From a young medic with a collection of comic books to a leader, a young man named Cross, and young Azar who blows up a puppy. Everyone in the platoon has their story of how their mind changed. But all these characters were normal young men, until they came to Vietnam, where they faced multiple challenges which affected their post war mental stability.

A large majority of ‘Regeneration’ is told from the actual participation in war from patients who took part in World War One (But not from their voices) that consists of horrific insights into the implications of war. Sassoon also had seen to be having some hallucinations that were brought up at the start of the play. With the time being written being very important and when Sassoon said that he had seen, “corpses, men with half their faces shot off, crawling across the floor”. This is a very graphic depiction of how war was, unlike ‘Journeys End’. Furthermore, Sassoon also references one time where he “nodded off on a bench” and, “when I woke up, the pavement was covered in corpses”, “old…black” which helps to create an atmosphere and images into the

‘No doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and the strain / have caused their stammering, disconnected talk,’ writes Siegfried Sassoon in the poem Survivors (1917). Sassoon’s irony in these lines condense a prevalent view of non-combatants during the First World War that the soldiers would recover from their physical injuries and mental illness after the phase of shock had concluded. In the short story Speed the Plough (1923), Mary Butts articulates scepticism towards the idea that Shell Shock will simply pass. Instead of employing the habitual indicators of war, the story showcases Butts’s fixation in avoiding them. Modernist writers, such as Butts, were interested in innovation and experimentation with language to create new forms of expression. The following analysis will explore how the modernist aesthetics shape this passage in order to express the experience of war but avoid recurring to the same language that explicitly evokes it.

Difficult situations arise almost daily in the lives of most individuals. When confronted with adversity, individuals are forced to deal with the circumstances in the best way they know how. People can reach a point where they can no longer deal with the effects of adversity in their lives. It is at this point that individuals have to make a choice, either to allow themselves to be devastated, or to rise above their difficulties and try to return their former sprit and identity back. In the struggle to deal with adversity an individual’s sprit and identity can suffer pain and uncertainty. The novel ‘The Wars’ by Timothy Findley exhibits that in the middle of adversity, individuals are

The theme emasculation appears several times throughout the novel Regeneration in variety of forms. Barker’s exploration of emasculation in the novel challenges traditional notions of manliness, showing war as a possible “feminine” experience. Pat Barker is bringing to attention that the atrocities suffered at war are making the soldiers unmanly as they’re facing shell shock and trauma. There are many situations in the novel where emasculation is expressed, where there is loss of power, masculinity, deprive of the male role and identity has taken place.

Aaron S. Walker & Jane Tobbell (2015) Lost voices and unlived lives: Exploring adults’ experiences of selective mutism using Interpretative phenomenological analysis, qualitative research. Psychology, 12:4, 453-471.