Summary | Genre | General Vision or Viewpoint | Cultural Context | Themes and Issues

Regeneration

Summary

The story is based in Craiglockhart, which is a psychiatric home for army veterans in Scotland. Rivers, an army psychologist, spends a great deal of time trying to understand his patients. One of these patients is Siegfried Sassoon, who has been sent to Craiglockhart because he has made a strong anti-war declaration. The story traces the various patterns of the patients, which Rivers finds he has to deal with. Many of these patients suffer from severe trauma as a result of their experiences in World War I. Some of the other patients, including Prior, affect Rivers. Rivers becomes deeply involved with these patients and as a result is compelled to take some weeks leave of absence.

On his return to Craiglockhart, Rivers has changed his attitude towards the war and identifies with the plight of the patients, and in particular the stance made by Sassoon. Towards the conclusion of the story Rivers gets a job in a London hospital working as a psychiatrist with R.F.C. pilots. Here he meets a doctor called Yealland and witnesses his brutal methods with patients in using electric shock treatment. This experience has a profound effect on Rivers. He is haunted by nightmares and realises how similar Rivers own treatment has been to Yealland. Rivers acknowledges to himself that both he and Yealland have done nothing other than silence their patients and both have refused to face the full brutality of war.

Rivers returns to Craiglockhart to vouch before the Hospital Board that Sassoon is ready to return to the war. Sassoon returns to France still maintaining his anti war stance, and Rivers realizes that he is returning to die.

Genre

This is a novel of social realism, which is written in four different parts. The story is told in the third person narrative voice and makes use of dialogue to give some realistic portraits of the various characters presented in the story.

General Vision or Viewpoint

The general vision in this story seems to show the particularly brutal effects of war and how deeply self-destructive this is on the human spirit. Simultaneously in this story we are given an insight into the changes wrought in the mind and heart of Rivers the army psychiatrist through his deep insights into the genuine suffering generated by war. Through the story of Rivers we see the need in the human soul for individual self-expression and understanding.

Cultural Context

The novel deals with the tragic effects of World War I on the veterans who fought in it. It is set in Scotland in a psychiatric hospital in the year 1917.

Initial pictures of the remoteness of the British psychiatric from the war situation are revealed through the figure of Rivers and Bryce another psychologist.

The horrors of life in the trenches emerges in the references to the terrible nightmares and dreams experienced by the patients.

Themes

War
The story deals with the horrific effects of war and in this particular case with the effects of World War I on people. There are graphic descriptions of the nightmares experiences by the patients in Craiglockhart of grenades and blood filled trenches. The story makes a strong anti-war statement.

Relationships
This novel deals with many different types of relationships. Rivers an army psychologist has various types of patients under his care. He is a deeply humane man and through his dealings with certain figures such as Prior, Rivers begins to understand human nature and recalls his own senseless stuttering because of his harsh father. Through his relationship with Sassoon and his other patients Rivers is forced to face the fact that the war was futile and self-defeating. The novel shows us the deeply human and compassionate nature of this man Rivers.

Honesty
The story opens with the honest and forthright denunciation on war expressed by Siegfried Sassoon the anti war poet. Sassoon’s character as painted in this novel emerges as an honest and sincere man who is not afraid to take a stance and stand over it. At every stage in the novel, Sassoon answers the questions posed to him honestly and truthfully. He does not renege on his stance. At the conclusion of the story he wants to return to the war, but he is firm in repeating to the Board that his opinion on the war has not changed.