Psychological Conditions and Regeneration of Soldiers through Traumatic Events

Pat Barker is a famous English writer and a novelist (“Pat Barker”). She is the author of many fictional books based on memory, trauma, survival, and Psychological recovery of a person (“Pat Barker”). Out of these books, Regeneration is one of the novels which is based on World War I, which describes the psychological conditions of the soldiers after experiencing traumatic events during the war. Regeneration describes the story of soldiers at Craiglockhart War Hospital, in which Dr. Rivers is treating soldiers with different psychological disorders, for example: mutism, and PTSD. The main concern of Dr. Rivers is to send back soldiers to the front in France, so they can fight for their country. However, Regeneration explains the various traumas of the war that affects the young men psychologically and physically. A young generation of men was the most affected by the war because only men were going to serve for their country. Allowing only men to go for a war shows the sexist behaviour of society towards women in early twentieth century. The harmful results of choosing males over women for a war came out only due to masculinity. “Masculinity stands for the set of traits which are assigned for boys and men” (“Masculinity”). “For example: toughness, independence, violence, and aggression” (“Masculinity”). Masculinity characters seem harmful to the soldiers because soldiers have to be strong, fearless, and brave all the time. According to masculinity, breakdown occurs only to weak person (Barker). In this essay, the main focus will be on the psychological harmful effects of masculinity on soldiers followed by their life experiences changed with masculinity and end up with the criticism of masculinity, by showing effects on soldiers’ health with war, with the central idea of the Regeneration.

To begin with, World War I has some adverse affect on soldiers due to masculinity which gives birth to various life threatening experiences. Barker states in Regeneration that Dr. Rivers illustrates, “The war that had promised so much in the way of ‘manly’ activity had actually delivered ‘feminine’ passivity, and on a scale that their mothers and sisters had scarcely known. No wonder they broke down” (108). It means war is an experience of masculinity in which men are supposed to fight without any kind of fear and shame with full of violence and aggression, but it does not seem true. Male soldiers are suffering mentally and physically with trauma of fearful machine gun firing, bombardment, and loss of their friends. These soldiers are spending their days, weeks, and months in a same trench where they have all time fear to die. By way of contrast, the life of their women has changed. Barker states that these women start working on men’s position at munitions factory since the war required more male soldiers on the front (90). At this point, Barker illustrates that women are financially independent and enjoying freedom in their lives whereas men are only bounded to the war for playing the role of being a soldier (90).

Masculinity has negative impacts on the mental health of a soldier. The negative outcomes are due to less expressive emotional behaviour of a soldier which comes from masculinity. Masculinity does not allow soldiers to express their fears, and emotional needs because they do not want to convict their weaknesses. For example, Prior after remember, through hypnosis, that he is responsible for the death of two soldiers, starts butting his chest to hurt himself (Barker 104). In Regeneration, Dr. Rivers states, “This was the closest Prior could come to asking for physical contact” (Barker 104). It states that Prior needs a hug to calm himself down from the regret of killing two soldiers, but he starts hurting himself. Prior’s behaviour of hurting himself and not asking for help shows that it does not seems manly to Prior to ask for physical support from Dr. Rivers to console his emotions. Instead, Prior tries to pretend as a strong soldier who can survive without any emotional support at the time he needs help. Hence, Prior do not wants Dr. Rivers to think him as a weak person who cannot serve.