One of the many Martello towers on the barren and wild Suffolk coast, very much like the one visited by Burns and Rivers, and in which Burns hides the night of his unstoppable nightmares.What strikes me about these two chapters is the question they raise about PROGRESS, in relation to soldiers suffering from the psychological fallout of the war. If progress requires the soldier to suppress (or, in other words, to ignore and bury, deep within themselves) the pain and distress of their remembered experience - then is this, in fact, progress at all?
Keeping Up Appearances
Burns has, it appears, made immense 'progress'. He has managed to leave Craiglockhart, and then, having returned to London briefly, leave there too - to return to his childhood origins on the Suffolk coast. There he lives a simple life, mixing with the locals, breathing the sea air and going for long walks in the countryside. When Rivers visits him, Burns manages to go most of each day without even mentioning the war at all, and gives the appearance that he has simply 'forgotten' about it.
Trying to Escape
However, the screams and nightmares every night, and his one, nighttime 'escape' to the terrifying, half-submerged Martello tower - these all provide solid evidence that he has forgotten nothing. He is simply trying to suppress the memories - and not very effectively at that. Also, it seems interesting that he is returning to 'childhood' to help him with this - which suggests this is not only suppression, but also regression, neither of which has anything to do with true progress.
Certain Death
Meanwhile, Sassoon's 'progress' takes the form of his decision to go back and rejoin the war. Or, in other words, to go and fight and risk likely death, for King and Country! In the eyes of the government, this would certainly be regarded as 'progress'; but, if it basically means he is putting himself in the hands of death, I fail to see how progressive that can really be felt to be...
Some things to think about:
- Why does Burns choose to go back to Suffolk to live?
- What is the significance of the Martello tower?
- Why has Sassoon decided to go back to fight?
- How do you think Rivers feels when he hears this news?
* * * * *
Some useful quotations:
He looked like a child trying to remember what it was that grown-ups said to newly arrived guests. He also looked, for the first time, deranged. [Note how the war has stripped him of all social skills, leaving him no more socially adept than a little child.]
Obviously, however hard Burns tried to thrust memories of the war behind him, the nightmare followed. [In other words, for Burns, any attempt at 'suppression' didn't really work.]
Rivers thought how misleading it was to say that the war had 'matured' these young men. It wasn't true of his patients, and it certainly wasn't true of Burns, in whom a prematurely aged man and a fossilised schoolboy seemed to exist side by side. It did give him a curiously ageless quality, but 'maturity' was hardly the word. [This is more evidence of "the complete disintegration of personality' effected by the war: the way in which, in one way, they were made old 'before their time', when contrasted with the way in which they were taken, psychogically and for comfort, back to their childhood persona, simply created an 'ageless' mess of a human being.]
Corpses were everywhere in the trenches. Used to strengthen parapets, to prop up sagging doorways, to fill in gaps in the duckboards. [This goes to show how commonplace death was in the trenches, and how it almost became a 'way of life', to which soldiers necessarily became desensitised.]
A resemblance that had merely nagged at him before returned to his mind with greater force. This waste of mud, these sump-holes reflecting a dim light at the sky, even that tower. It was like France. Like the battlefields. A resemblance greater by night than by day, perhaps, because here, by day, you could see things grow, and there nothing grew. [Another example of the ghosts of the war which haunt those who had contact with it, wherever they go - and even, here, in the quiet, Suffolk countryside, where the tower is described as "like the bones of a skull".]
His surrender, when it came, was almost shocking. Suddenly, his body had the rag-doll floppiness of the newborn. [Here, the REGRESSION is almost total...]
'I couldn't seem to get out of the dream. I woke up, I knew I was awake, I could move and yet... it was still there.' [See above: the nightmares never go away...]
He had missed his chance of being ordinary. [One inevitable consequence of the war was that those who fought in it, like Burns, would NEVER be the same again.]
And finally, if we need clarification of Sassoon's reasons for going back to fight, we need look no further than the poem he gives Rivers:
When I’m asleep, dreaming and drowsed and warm,
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers of the storm
Rumble and drone and bellow overhead,
Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.
‘Why are you here with all your watches ended?
‘From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the line.’
In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;
And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
I think of the Battalion in the mud.
‘When are you going back to them again?
‘Are they not still your brothers through our blood?’
He looked like a child trying to remember what it was that grown-ups said to newly arrived guests. He also looked, for the first time, deranged. [Note how the war has stripped him of all social skills, leaving him no more socially adept than a little child.]
Obviously, however hard Burns tried to thrust memories of the war behind him, the nightmare followed. [In other words, for Burns, any attempt at 'suppression' didn't really work.]
Rivers thought how misleading it was to say that the war had 'matured' these young men. It wasn't true of his patients, and it certainly wasn't true of Burns, in whom a prematurely aged man and a fossilised schoolboy seemed to exist side by side. It did give him a curiously ageless quality, but 'maturity' was hardly the word. [This is more evidence of "the complete disintegration of personality' effected by the war: the way in which, in one way, they were made old 'before their time', when contrasted with the way in which they were taken, psychogically and for comfort, back to their childhood persona, simply created an 'ageless' mess of a human being.]
Corpses were everywhere in the trenches. Used to strengthen parapets, to prop up sagging doorways, to fill in gaps in the duckboards. [This goes to show how commonplace death was in the trenches, and how it almost became a 'way of life', to which soldiers necessarily became desensitised.]
A resemblance that had merely nagged at him before returned to his mind with greater force. This waste of mud, these sump-holes reflecting a dim light at the sky, even that tower. It was like France. Like the battlefields. A resemblance greater by night than by day, perhaps, because here, by day, you could see things grow, and there nothing grew. [Another example of the ghosts of the war which haunt those who had contact with it, wherever they go - and even, here, in the quiet, Suffolk countryside, where the tower is described as "like the bones of a skull".]
His surrender, when it came, was almost shocking. Suddenly, his body had the rag-doll floppiness of the newborn. [Here, the REGRESSION is almost total...]
'I couldn't seem to get out of the dream. I woke up, I knew I was awake, I could move and yet... it was still there.' [See above: the nightmares never go away...]
He had missed his chance of being ordinary. [One inevitable consequence of the war was that those who fought in it, like Burns, would NEVER be the same again.]
And finally, if we need clarification of Sassoon's reasons for going back to fight, we need look no further than the poem he gives Rivers:
When I’m asleep, dreaming and drowsed and warm,
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers of the storm
Rumble and drone and bellow overhead,
Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.
‘Why are you here with all your watches ended?
‘From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the line.’
In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;
And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
I think of the Battalion in the mud.
‘When are you going back to them again?
‘Are they not still your brothers through our blood?’
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