Chapters 19-23: Different cures

The two sequels to Regeneration, the second of which won the prestigious BOOKER PRIZE when it was published in 1995.

In the final chapters to the novel, Barker tries to tie up various loose ends, and bring to the story some sense of closure, for each of the three main characters, and some of the minor ones too.

Goodbyes

Billy Prior's relationship with Sarah seems to be levelling out, and he is even due to meet her mother. Sassoon and Owen say their goodbyes to each other, and Rivers says his own goodbye to Craiglockhart. Towards the end of the novel, Sassoon passes his 'board' assessment, and is declared fit to go back and fight on the front line. Even Willard regains the use of his legs again, although this is not the 'miracle' he deems it to be.

Nightmares

Most significant in these final chapters, however, is Rivers' experiences in London, and, in particular, during his visit to the National Hospital in Queen's Square. Here, he spends the day with Dr Yealland, whose methods of curing a soldier's mutism are, at first sight, particularly brutal (imprisonment in a locked room whilst increasingly powerful electrical currents are placed on his mouth, neck and throat). But the nightmare Rivers has the following night make him wonder whether his own brand of 'healing' - his psychanalytic dialogue - is actually any different in the end, since that, too, attempts to cure the sick soldier and render them fit again for war.

The Trilogy Continues...

Finally, the novel does not really 'end', leaving itself wide open for the next two books in the trilogy, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road. There is much more to find out about Dr Rivers, and his most damaged of patients, Billy Prior...

Some things to think about:

1. What do you think is going through Sassoon's mind when he gets passed fit for active duty again?
2. How did you respond when you read the scene in Yealland's hospital?
3. How do you account for Rivers' nightmares about the horse's bit?

* * * *

As for the useful quotations this week, I thought it might be useful for YOU to categorise each of them. (You are probably familiar with the different themes and topics which have recurred so far.) So read through these, and see if you can work out why each of them is significant. You could even use the COMMENTS facility to work out your own P.E.E. for some of them...

• The darkness, the nervousness, the repeated unnecessary swallowing...He was back in France, waiting to go back out on patrol.
• He told himself he was never going back, he was free, but the word 'free' rang hollow. Hurry up, Sarah, he thought.
• He was glad to have the night shut out, with its memories of fear and worried sentries whispering.
• Without warning, Prior saw again the shovel, the sack, the scattered lime. The eyeball lay in the palm of his hand.
• He needed her ignorance to hide in. Yet, at the same time, he wanted to know and be known as deeply as possible. And the two desires were irreconcilable.
• And yet he was writing, and he seemed to think he was writing well. All the anger and grief went into the poetry. He had given up hope of influencing events. Or perhaps he'd just given up hope.
• Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace.
• ...a creature - it hardly resembled a man - crawled through the door and began moving towards him...It seemed to Rivers that his expression was both sombre and malevolent.
• ...in a war nobody is a free agent. He and Yealland were both locked in, every bit as much as their patients were.
• I think he's made up his mind to get killed.
• Rivers felt there was a genuine and very deep desire for death.
• And if death were to be denied? Then he might well break down. A real breakdown, this time.