Regeneration Book Reviews Examples

Regeneration is Pat Barker’s book on the First World War trilogy. In this book, some of the characters are historical, for instance William Rivers who is the doctor to the shell-shock casualties during World War 1; Siegfried Sassoon who is a skilled war hero. He is also a renowned poet. He wrote the Soldier’s Declaration in which the soldier refuses to continue being in the service of the British army; citing moral grounds on which the war had been conducted. He says that it (war) was like an effort that was misguided thus contributing to merciless butchering of men. Sassoon was later taken to Craiglockhart War Hospital where William Rivers had to treat him so that he could be sent back to the battle field.
This novel tells less on Sassoon but there is more information on the mental impacts of the war to him. Backer depicts the mentally damaged and shell-shocked patients through William River’s eyes. Billy Prior who is another traumatized soldier gets to the hospital but he is not able to speak. We find another soldier named Burns who can’t’ eat without vomiting because he is disturbed by war experiences too. Another soldier is also revealed; he is paralyzed despite the fact that the spinal cord has not been interfered with. Barker asks a question in a more sensitive way thus revealing the psychological damages in her characters. She uses the question whether war is worth the cost it has on those sacrificing for it. We find even Dr. Rivers questioning the goodness of war though he has been given the responsibility to restore the soldiers to duty.
Without being too emotional, Pat Barker reveals hers characters’ emotions. Mostly, she uses dialogue between the patients and the doctor in revealing the impacts of war and its horrific experience.
Throughout the book, Pat Barker seems to be shifting the point of view-point of third-person narration. She allows us (readers) to know more about what characters think.
Though this is a war novel, it has not been set on the battlefields. It has been set from the characters’ minds. Many of these characters are just historical. Regeneration is like a drama which gradually reveals to the reader what happens in the main story. There is also a sense of compassion as well as weak tension revealing itself from the story. This tension is in the minds of the characters thus ending up with psychological problems. I also read honesty in this Barker’s narration.
This narration takes place without any list of characters. it is prudent too to acknowledge that the scenes are not connected one on one. However, the characters are shown in a mental pathetic situation. In this narration, sex, homosexuality and religion and the love in father and son are intertwined nicely with the story but do not come out clearly. Though battle fields are not shown, all is shown through the memories of the patients who are in Craiglockhart War Hospital.
In a nutshell, Regeneration is a well thought-out book. It has cleverly incorporated both fictional characters and fictional characters in portraying the true image of the horrors of World War 1