An Exploration of Stories and Experience in Barker's Regeneration

The experiences and stories of Regeneration are greatly inspired by historical events, sociological influences, and the family history of the author, Pat Barker. Bringing real life poets and their experiences together with a fictional plot surrounding the Great War, Barker was able to produce a novel from an intriguing blend of fact and fiction, one that conveys several aspects of history and pieces them together with first hand knowledge from her family. Tying both the horrific stories from her grandfather in battle, and the familiarity that her husband had with a man in the field of war neuroses, Barker was able to create a novel confronting the psychological effects of World War I.

Born in Thornaby-on-Tees in 1943, Barker endured a childhood of forlorn, one without a father. As an infant, Barker's father was a pilot in the Royal Air Force, but did not survive War World II. Instead, she was forced to face the consequences of war at an early age (Carson, 1997). Barker was brought up mainly by her grandparents, and aside to her father's presence in war, she was exposed to the stories and scars of her grandfather, resulting from the First World War. This was described in an interview with Narins (1997) when Barker had answered, "My grandfather first ignited my curiosity about the war, plying me with tales of his military exploits while toying with his old bayonet wound."(p.11). This response by Barker describes how her grandfather was such an important figure in her life. His actions and stories lighted way for Barker to be intrigued by the Great War, and later they inspired her to write a story such as Regeneration. Together, the absence of her father, and the stories and wounds of years of fighting, made early and lasting impressions on the young Pat Barker on the penalties and outcomes of war.

In 1814, the "war to end all wars" began, proving nothing of its name. When war broke out in August 1914, France, Britain and Russia were allied against Germany and Austria. The Germans attacked France through southern Belgium, aiming to capture Paris in a swift "knock-out blow". The French Army stopped the Germans along the River Marne north of Paris, helped by the British Expeditionary Force that rushed across the Channel. Both sides dug in, creating lines of muddy trenches. These were defended with barbed-wire fences, land mines, artillery and murderous machine-guns. On each side, the generals would plan attacks to try to break through the enemy front line. First, they would shell the enemy lines to weaken their defenses, and then the infantry would be sent out of their trenches into "no-man's land". These attacks cost hundreds of thousands of lives to shift the boundary just a few miles. Only in the autumn of 1918 did the allies finally break through (Ellis, 1976). The warfare used during the duration of the Great War was well known as trench warfare. What is feared in the conditions of trench warfare is not the actual danger, but the prospect of being overwhelmed by emotion, leading to a disintegration of the ego. This would then bring about a feeling of helplessness, a usual causative factor, which Doctor William H.R. Rivers so often discovered. Pat Barker's husband, David Barker, introduced the field of nerve regeneration and the studies of Doctor William H.R. Rivers to his wife. Pat was so intrigued by River's studies, that it inspired Barker to use him in her novel, Regeneration. Rivers was both a character in Barker's novel, as well as a real life doctor. In either case, as described by Hunter (2002) he noted, " Rivers was one of the first doctors to take seriously the subjectivity of soldiers afflicted with all sorts of paralyzing symptoms: terrifying nightmares, spells of deep gloom, appetite loss, insomnia, and a host of other idiosyncratic complaints that seemed to defy comprehension." (p. 23). Rivers understood the bizarre, but reasonable expression of men who witnessed and experienced a degree of suffering and vulnerability unimaginable to those who have never been on the battlefield.

Amongst the many soldiers who were sent to Craiglockhart hospital to be "fixed" by Doctor Rivers, was another real life soldier who Barker introduced into her novel. In July of 1917, poet Siegfried Sassoon had written a letter, A Soldier's Declaration, which was a document, that according to Miller (2002) was, "denouncing his country's political motives in the conflict [war] and refusing to suffer anymore agonies on behalf of an ungrateful nation" (p. 76). Sassoon was tired of fighting in the war. He felt it was a useless war, one that he described as, "being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it" (Barker, 1991, p. 3). As a punishment, Sassoon was force to enter the Craiglockhart hospital as mentally unsound. There, he met other patients who had much worse problems than he did, although the common consensus was that of shell shock. Sassoon described this strange process as he wrote,

"Shell shock. How many a brief bombardment had its long-delayed after-effect in the minds of these survivors, many of whom had looked at their companions and laughed while the inferno did its best to destroy them. Not then was their evil hour, but now; now, in the sweating, suffocation of nightmare, in paralysis of limbs, in the stammering of dislocated speech. Worst of all, in the disintegration of those qualities through which they had been so gallant and selfless and uncomplaining - this, in the finer types of men, was the unspeakable tragedy of shell shock" (Shepard, 2000, p.181).

For the poor soldiers who had to experience the war, most will never again be the same. As stated by Sassoon, the soldiers went through battles after battles of bombs surrounding them, hoping to survive. Those who were lucky to live watched as their brothers and friends struggled to survive themselves. He then goes on to describe that, at that slight moment of being so close to death, it would not be the worst time they would face. Rather later, when the bombs are gone, is when others would wish sooner to be dead, because it is then that one would become mentally paralyzed. It is then that the soldier whose bravery and courage, that once fought them through the war is gone, and that soldier is helpless. No longer was the fear about death, but rather fear of themselves.

This antiwar novel, untraditionally, tells a part of the story of war that is not often told. How war may better and break a man's mind, and so makes the madness of war more than a metaphor. When one can reach the point where they rather experience death, than to be forever locked in the immobile mind of their paralyzed body, is emotion with such an incredible magnitude. The historical events that lead to and follow through with the Great War brewed stories unlike any other. An amazing epidemic overtook soldiers' unwitting response to a horror that could not be expressed, and that was, in fact "unspeakable" to many of its victims, and made mute by emotional agony. However, an unconditional hero, Siegfried Sassoon spoke out publicly protesting the war, just to have been claimed mentally unsound. With her childhood tattooed in her heart, the factual presence of both Siegfried Sassoon and Doctor William H.R. Rivers, and the history that they had combined, it is of no surprise that Pat Barker had all of the inspiration she needed to complete the psychologically draining novel, Regeneration.