Chapters 12-13: Rivers cracks under the strain

One of the later drafts by Owen of his poem 'Anthem for Doomed Youth'. If you look closely, you can read, in the bottom left corner, where it says "These words were written by SS when W showed him this sonnet at Craiglockhart in Sept 1917".

Losing the Will to LOVE

Prior and Sarah escape to the seaside, and he keeps flitting between warmth and coldness towards her. The end up having sex, but any warmth he felt BEFORE they did so soon disappears AFTER they have finished. Prior is incapable of enjoying any simple affection with her, because of the psychological damage the war has done to him. As a result, he ends up treating her very cruelly and coldly, when, deep down, this is probably the last thing he wants to do. This shows ANOTHER effect of the war on the soldier: destruction of man's capacity for love and affection.

Patient Overload

During Chapter 13, we are given, effectively, a tour of Rivers' patient load, including:

• Burns: on the verge of being discharged, but still vomiting at night;
• Prior: desperate to go back to war, but still passing out, having nightmares etc.;
• Willard: still convinced that he is paralysed, when there is no medical proof of this;
• Anderson: so terrified of the sight of blood, that his roommate's shaving cut almost destroys him;
• Lansdowne: overwhelmed by a claustrophobia which prevents him entering the trenches;
• Fothersgill: "Basically, he was suffering from being too old for the war..."
• Broadbent: delusional, to the extent that he is convinced (wrongly) his own mother is dead.
  

And Rivers becomes so overwhelmed himself by all this mental illness and decay, that he, too, finds himself falling ill, and ends up having to take three weeks' leave. It seems that mental illness, when this powerful and horrific, can almost be contagious...

Look at this!

N.B. There is also a fascinating passage where Sassoon helps Owen redraft his poem, "Anthem For Doomed Youth". Here are the actual drafts which Sassoon helped Owen to produce: draft 1; draft 2; draft 3; draft 4. Have a look at them, and especially at the notes both men have made.

Some things to think about:

• Why does Prior turn so cold immediately after he and Sarah have had sex?
• Why is he so desperate to return and fight in the war?
• What is it that has finally made Rivers break down and need 3 weeks' leave?

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Some useful quotations:

• ‘There’s another reason I want to go back. Rather a nasty, selfish little reason, but since you clearly think I’m a nasty selfish little person that won’t come as a surprise. When all this is over, people who didn’t go to France, or didn’t do well in France—people of my generation, I mean—aren’t going to count for anything. This is the Club to end all Clubs.’ [Like so many of his fellow soldiers, war has given Prior a sense of belonging, and one which he does not want to lose.]
• In his Khaki, Prior moved about them like a ghost. [Prior, like many soldiers, feels an enormous distance between him and those who stayed at home. He feels like a pariah in his own country.]
• Yesterday, at the seaside, I felt as if I came from another planet. [More evidence of Prior's alienation from 'normal' society, as a result of his war experience.]

• He both envied and despised her, and was quite coldly determined to get her. They owed him something, all of them, and she should pay. [Prior feels violently angry towards all civilians, and here can't help seeing Sarah as just 'one of them', so much so that he is almost talking about sex with her as if it were rape.]
• The first time was almost always a disappointment. Either stuck at half mast or firing before you reached the target. He didn't want to think about Sarah like this. [Even when he is talking about sex, he can't help but use a MILITARY metaphor, which shows how big an effect the war has had on his mind.]
• A few grains of sand in the pubic hair, a mingling of smells. Nothing that a prolonged soak in the tub wouldn't wash away. [War has MADE him desensitised to tender human emotion, like love. Although, in Sarah's mind, they have just 'made love', to Prior it is nothing more than how he describes it here.]

• Prior became quite suddenly depressed... "Oh, I was remembering a man in my platoon." [He can't stop thinking about the war.]
• He listened to the surge and rumble of the storm, and his mind filled with memories of his last few weeks in France. [He REALLY can't stop thinking about the war!]

• ‘You can’t talk to anybody here,’ Prior said. ‘Everybody’s either lost somebody, or knows somebody who has. They don’t want the truth. It’s like letters of condolence. “Dear Mrs Bloggs, Your son had the side of his head blown off by a shell and took five hours to die. We did manage to give him a decent Christian burial. Unfortunately that particular stretch of ground came under heavy bombardment the day after, so George has been back to see us five or six times since then.” They don’t want that. They want to be told that George—or Johnny—or whatever his name was, died a quick death and was given a decent send off.’ [Prior, like Sassoon, struggles with the conflict between civilians and soldiers. Here, he sees it as a conflict between lies and truth: civilians want comforting, cosy, clean lies; only the soldiers know the horrible truth.]
• 'Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death;/Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland -/Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand...' Precisely, Sassoon thought. And now we complain about the soup. Or rather, they do. [Sassoon is struck by the triviality and stupidity of people complaining about LITTLE things in life, when soldiers have to ensure SO much worse in the trenches.]