Exploration of the presentation of suffering in part 1 of Regeneration by Pat Barker
Suffering, in the novel Regeneration, is presented as painful and extensive inner conflict that is present in individual patients subjected to treatment in Craiglockhart. Sassoon stated, “It was like being 3 different people and they all wanted to go different ways”. This highlights the fact that Sassoon is at war with himself, as he does not know which path to take due to his mind set on different objectives. It also shows confusion and misunderstanding, much like a child, this can show demasculinisation of men and how war has transformed the men into children. The use of the conjunction “and” shows a pause, this reflects back onto the statement that Sassoon provided as it can show how he has to process his thoughts before reaching a conclusion. The conjunction also allows any other sentence to be added after it, this also reflects back on the statement as Sassoon had different options. Barker’s intentions were to show that the effect on men after the war was confusion. This may have been due to the fact that the soldiers were told that what they were doing was right, however killing the other men didn’t feel right, therefore left them in a state of confusion.
War, in the novel, is presented as a thing only masculine male could participate in. “They’d been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness. Men who broke down, or cried, or admitted fear, were sissies, weaklings, failures. Not men’. The significant word Rivers, uses in the quote, is ‘trained’. This is because it indicates that the men have been given specific orders to stop themselves from being demasculinised which would lead them to being unfit to take the proper role in the war, as only men could be involved in it. The quote uses asyndetic listing, this can show that the list could have been broken up with a conjunction however it didn’t due to it being the concrete definition of masculinity, this reflects back on the quote where it said “broke down”. Barker’s intentions
War, in the novel, is presented as a thing only masculine male could participate in. “They’d been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness. Men who broke down, or cried, or admitted fear, were sissies, weaklings, failures. Not men’. The significant word Rivers, uses in the quote, is ‘trained’. This is because it indicates that the men have been given specific orders to stop themselves from being demasculinised which would lead them to being unfit to take the proper role in the war, as only men could be involved in it. The quote uses asyndetic listing, this can show that the list could have been broken up with a conjunction however it didn’t due to it being the concrete definition of masculinity, this reflects back on the quote where it said “broke down”. Barker’s intentions