Y13: Sarah May- have alook at the marking throughout. I agree that your conclusion is weak, but I've given you a few ideas here on how to mend it. Watch your word count and remember the 'different interpretations' thing!

Sarah May - my complete 2nd draft. The conclusion is very weak as Emma has the copy of the A grade essay you gave us, so can i have some help with that please? Its not 3,231 words long.
Sarah- if you’ve loaned Emma the essay, you’ll find copy of it on lightingfoolsPat Barker’s Regeneration ITALICS FOR TITLES THROUGHOUT PLEASE is a novel set in 1917 at Craiglockhart hospital just outside Edinburgh, where those who were directly involved in the war and suffered from neurasthenia were sent for pioneering psychological therapy and treatment. W.H.R Rivers, an army psychiatrist, and Seigfried Sassoon, a soldier sent to Craiglockhart for political as much as medical reasons, are the main characters. Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart by the government because his ‘Soldier’s Declaration’ was a considerable embarrassment for them, and it was politically more useful to discredit him as writing it while suffering from neurasthenia rather than allow him the publicity that a court-martial would give him.
Regeneration was written in the 1990’s, giving Barker an historical perspective on the events she portrays and this allows her to reflect on the times and the attitudes of her characters with some detachment, allowing her to present the reader with a variety of different viewpoints on the war and its consequences. Barker’s main purpose for writing her novel was to give a fresh approach to writing about the war as she takes her readers through the psychological and social consequences of the trenches, rather than describing the action on the battlefields themselves. The novel presents us with three dimensional, developed characters, fictional and fictionalised, and shows the effects of the war on a variety of people with a variety of civilian and military experiences. The historical Seigfried Sassoon was an educated, aristocratic trench officer in the war, compared to Barker who is a working class, female novelist with no war experience. Sassoon’s poetry makes a very strong point of protest and as he has first hand experience of the war, it is easier to do this. Much of his poetry was actually written whilst in trenches or in hospitals; in fact, some of his poems were written during his stay at Craiglockhart in 1917, the setting for Barker’s novel. Sassoon had a number of purposes for his work: he used it as a method to voice his protest, to create sympathy for the soldiers and, perhaps unintentionally, because it was therapeutic; as Rivers notes in Regeneration of the fictionalised Sassoon and his relatively speedy recovery, ‘writing the poems had been therapeutic’ (page 26). His poetry is short, dense, direct, and powerful and he makes his point very clearly.
In Regeneration, the governing narrative technique is varieties of free indirect style. NICELY PUT Free indirect style is a technique of third person narration, which allows the narrator to drop into a character’s consciousness unannounced, for example in lines like, ‘the net curtain behind Rivers’ head billowed out in a glimmering arc’ (page 11). This tells us we are in Sassoon’s head because, as he is a poet, no other character would think with that amount of imagery and descriptive vocabulary. This line mirrors ‘blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve’ in Sassoon’s poem, ‘The Death Bed’, which shows Barker may have used this poem as an aspect of research for the novel. By using the third person narrative perspective, but populating it with a variety of her character’s own voices by using free indirect style, Barker achieves a great deal. Firstly, she reflects a number of her character’s personalities and opinions; secondly, she allows the reader to experience events of the narrative from a character’s perspective and finally allows her to have more than one main character and gives the reader an intimate knowledge of a number of characters. The critic Mikhail Bakhtin, writing on Dostoevsky, states that, ‘language is constitutively intersubjective (therefore social) and logically precedes subjectivity’, this SUGGESTS that free indirect style is a narrative trick as the dialogue is actually between the author and the reader. are being told the story, by the author, rather than being shown it by the characters, as it appears to be. As Regeneration is a psychological and sociological novel, it looks at the consequences of the war on society and the people in it. Barker examines and analyses the psychological effects of the war by using free indirect style and constantly dropping into a character’s consciousness. By this we can see how the war has affected them, ‘he woke to a dugout smell of wet sandbags and stale farts’ (page 101). This is when Prior has been hypnotised to help him recall what has struck him dumb, Barker drops into his consciousness so the reader can see what he is recalling too. During Prior’s hypnosis, the main literary technique we are shown is free indirect style, this is because without it we would only learn about Prior’s experiences by him telling us about them which wouldn’t ‘work’ because Prior cannot recall his experiences. Rivers and the readers soon discover the extent to which Prior is affected by the war by one, in particular, incident that has happened, ‘what am I supposed to do with this gobstopper?’ (page 103). This shows his callousness towards the war, and how harsh it has made him, because this is his reply when a man he was talking to minutes before, was blown up and he picked up his eyeball. When Prior has woken and realises the incident, he is shocked that that is what had struck him dumb, saying ‘is that all?’, because the war had had such an affect on him psychologically, that particular incident had seemed very minor to him.Timothy Marshall states that ‘the technical resources of narrative in prose (the varieties of indirect discourse in particular) do have an inherent capacity to represent languages other than the author’s’. This comment is more relevant to Barker’s work over Sassoon’s because Barker at least presents herself as a neutral narrator. Although we don’t get Barker’s voice directly in the novel it is easy to see she isn’t completely invisible by the way she presents her characters. For example, Barker believes that neurasthenia was an actual effect of the war, so her characters that also believe this are given more time and credibility in the novel. Prior’s view on this subject is the same as Barker’s, whereas Langdon’s aren’t. We can tell by the representation of these characters that Barker favours Prior. Some characters are given more speech than others and Barker tries to create sympathy for others, from the readers, ‘it was the closest Prior could come to asking for physical contact’ (page 104). This is after Prior’s hypnotism when he is upset and he ‘seized Rivers by the arms and began butting him in the chest, hard enough to hurt’ (page 104). This appears to be Prior’s way of wanting comfort because during the war it was unaccepted for men to express their emotions. Prior seems to be the character who Barker creates the most sympathy for, this could be because they are both from a working class background. As Barker uses free indirect style the readers can tell whose viewpoint we are sharing, by the way they think and what they think, even if these thoughts themselves aren’t introduced as such. ‘Pipes lined the wall, twisting with the turning of the stair, gurgling from time to time like lengths of human intestine’ (page 17), we know this is Rivers’ perspective because he is a doctor so he is likely to think that objects are body parts. Rivers’ and Sassoon’s vocabulary and the way they converse show their educated discourse, unlike prior Sarah and Ada, where what they say and how they say it shows their working class background. ‘Noting that grove between radius and ulna was even deeper than it had been a week ago’ (page 18), this shows Rivers’ education and also tells the reader we are in Rivers’ head, as no other character would think this way. In contrast, the line, ‘Sarah began to feel green and hairy’ (page 159), shows Sarah’s working class BACKGROUND through Barker’s voice and language as she compares herself to a gooseberry, which is typical of her colloquial discourse. Barker also uses silence as a psychologically – revealing voice, particularly with Prior. Rivers believed that ‘the talking cure’ as Sigmund Freud called it, was the only way to express repressed memories of battlefield experience, when the patient had, ‘usually been devoting considerable energy to the task of forgetting whatever traumatic events had precipitated his neurosis’ (page 26). However, it was socially unacceptable for a man to express their emotions, ‘they’d been trained to identify emotional repression as the essence of manliness’ (page 48), because if they did they would be labelled ‘sissies, weaklings, failures’ (page 48). This left the men bottling up their emotions and feelings and, in the case of Prior, struck dumb. When Prior is hypnotised he, Rivers and the readers finally learn what traumatic event had caused his muteness, ‘a numbness had spread all over the lower half of his face’ (page 103). We also know that it took a while for it to be cured, because he didn’t ever discuss his emotions.
YOU NEED TO LINK THIS BETTER- THE OBVIOUS LINK BEING THAT SASSOON’S CHILDISH STYLE AND ANGRY TONE MAY BE AS MUCH OF AN EFFORT TO DISTANCE HIMSELF FROM HIS OWN EMOTIONS AS PRIOR’S SILENCE AND MUTISM IS.In Sassoon’s poetry there is juxtaposition between the anger and the childish innocent style, that he portrays, for example in ‘Died of Wounds’ there is a simplistic nursery rhyme rhythm, contrasting with the horror of its content. ‘Does it Matter?’ is a satirical and sarcastic and is written in an epic voice and leans towards a lyric voice in certain places. YOU NEED TO DEFINE WHAT YOU MEAN BY EPIC AND LYRIC VOICE. The epic voice in this poem is Sassoon addressing the reader and himself, for the purpose of creating sympathy for soldiers and displaying his views on the war. The lyric voice in this poem is Sassoon addressing himself, thinking through his experiences and working out his fears, feelings and emotions.‘As you sit on the terrace rememberingAnd turning your face to the light.’This shows great detail of how a man in distress might behave, which is where we can see Sassoon’s lyric voice, so these two lines could be a reflection of his own experiences. This poem can be compared to pages 159-160 of Regeneration when Sarah Lumb is walking around a hospital and finds a hidden ward with soldiers who have occurred very bad injuries, such as mutilation. ‘Does it Matter?’ has an upbeat and jolly feel of how to deal with mutilation because it is satirical and ironic, even though it gets across the same points as the section of Regeneration. ‘And you need not show that you mindWhen the others come in after huntingTo gobble their muffins and eggs.’This gives the message that society ignores men who are mutilated, which is the same message given in the novel. ‘If the country demanded that price then it should bloody well be prepared to look at the result’ (page 160), this is Sarah’s opinion of the way these men should be treated by society. She is so shocked by what she had seen and by the way the men are put away in a hidden ward so that no one can see them.‘Glory of Women’ can also be compared to the same extract from the novel as ‘Does it Matter?’. This poem has a monological voice because it is Sassoon’s voice and no one else’s voice appears. The general point of this poem is that Sassoon think women don’t want to see the effects of the war, that they only care when their men are still well or have small heroic wounds.‘You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave,Or wounded in a mentionable place.’This can be compared to Madge in Regeneration who visits her boyfriend in a hospital, for physical injuries. ‘Madge was now sitting on the bed…to bask in the admiration of her resorted lover and to plan what they would do on his leave’ (page 158-159). This shows that Madge does still care about her lover, when he has a wound which shows his bravery but we are unsure whether she would still behave in the same way if he had a bigger injury or was mutated. Barker proves Sassoon wrong in his opinions that women don’t want to see the effects of the war with her character Sarah. When Sarah Lumb comes across the hidden war she believes society should be forced to look at the consequences of the war. ‘Glory of Women’ reveals Sassoon’s prejudices and assumes that women fall for propaganda. Women are excluded from the poem and they don’t get a voice. In Regeneration Sarah does have a voice and she is a lot more sensitive and thoughtful than the stereotyped woman that Sassoon satirises.In ‘The Death-Bed’ Sassoon uses experience of the war as the voice of his character in the poem, whereas Barker has no experience of war so the voices of her characters are based on research.‘He stirred, shifted his body; then the painLeapt like a prowling beast, and gripping and toreHis groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.’This gives the impression that Sassoon is writing from experience because his character’s opiate is wearing off and Sassoon describes how it is feeling in great detail, which gives the readers the impression that he is writing from his own experience of opiate wearing off. EXTEND THIS- TO WHAT EXTENT IS THIS REVEALING OF A GENUINELY PERSONAL, AUTHENTIC VOICE, AND TO WHAT EXTENT IS SASSOON USING THE READER’S KNOWLEDGE OF HIS WAR EXPERIENCE TO GIVE A SENSE OF AUTHENTICITY TO HIS WORK? DOES BARKER HAVE TO WORK HARDER FOR THE SAME SENSE OF AN AUTHENTIC VOICE? He does this by using an epic voice like he does in ‘Does it Matter?’. Aspects of this poem are written in free indirect style, like the novel. The character is drifting between consciousness and unconsciousness, so when he is drifting off to sleep, we hear about his dreams and what is going on in his head because of free indirect style. A point of comparison is the line: ‘Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve’ which is very similar to the line in the novel: ‘The net curtain behind Rivers’ head billowed out in a glimmering arc’ (page 11). These lines are very similar and Barker may even have got the inspiration for this line from the line in Sassoon’s poem.‘The General’, ‘The Rear-Guard’ and ‘To the Warmongers’ are a major point of comparison as they feature in the novel. In the novel Graves has given Sassoon an envelope, after Graves leaves Sassoon opens the envelope with Rivers and inside is a few sheets of paper. ‘On the top sheet, dated the 22nd April, Sassoon had written in pencil ‘I wrote these in hospital ten days after I was wounded’’ (page 24). Following this quote are the poems; ‘The Rear-Guard’, ‘The General’ and ‘To the Warmongers’. ‘The General’ was written in Denmark Hill Hospital in April 1917, ‘To the Warmongers’ was also written at Denmark Hill Hospital on the 23rd April 1917 and ‘The Rear-Guard’ was also written in the same place about ten days after Sassoon was wounded. NOT SURE OF THE RELEVANCE OF THIS. About this poem, the historical Sassoon said ‘he thought I was in severe shock. But if so, could I have written such a strong poem?’. Barker has clearly written pages 24-25 from Sassoon’s real life experiences as the dates mentioned in the novel fit with when he wrote them in real life. OKAY- THIS TIES IN WITH THE POINS ABOUT AUTHENTICITY- SASSOON’S POETIC VOICE AND HIS OWN STATE OF MIND SEEM INEXTRICABLY LINKED, WHEREAS BARKER HAS TO ONLY HER IMAGINATION, NOT HER EXPERIENCE, TO INFORM HER PRESENTATION OF WAR TRAUMA.‘The General’ is written in a very childlike manner which contrasts with the horrendous content. The voice of the character, the general, is very cheery ‘’Good morning, good morning!’’ and implies he doesn’t understand and doesn’t care what the soldiers are going through. This poem is written through the voice of experience and sounds like it could be Sassoon’s voice. ‘Repression of War Experience’ is written in a free verse and appears to be Sassoon enacting his thoughts. The poem includes hyphens which show a stream of consciousness.‘And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame – No, no, not that – it’s bad to think of the war’Here the character is almost interrupting himself so he doesn’t think of the war.‘Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,And you’re as right as rain….’Again, the voice in the poem appears to be stopping himself thinking.‘The Rear-Guard’ was written about the Hindenburg Line and the soldiers who were fighting on it. It begins with a three line stanza, then a four line stanza, following with an eleven line stanza and ends with a seven line stanza. All have a simple rhyme structure, like most of Sassoon’s poems.‘Groping along the tunnel, step by step,He winked his prying torch with patching glareFrom side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.’This poem creates a huge amount of sympathy for Sassoon’s fellow soldiers, like many other of his poems and his declaration in Regeneration.When Sassoon wrote the poem ‘Letter to Robert Graves’ he didn’t intend for it to be published. The poem is certainly a lyric by T.S Eliot’s definition- it is the poet talking to himself in his own voice, to such an extent that Sassoon never intended the poem fro publication I’VE INSERTED THIS POINT- ELIOT WAS THE POET AND CRITIC WHO CODIFIED THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE LYRIC, EPIC AND DRAMATIC VOICES- YOU’LL NEED TO CREDIT HIS BOOK ‘ON POETRY AND POETS’ IN YOUR BIBLIOGRAPHY- he didn’t want to reveal his private side to the public, but Graves published it in his autobiography even though Sassoon objected. It was then withdrawn from Graves’ autobiography, but shortly after fifty copies were printed. So the voice in this poem is A PRIVATE VOICE MADE PUBLIC. YOU NEED TO QUOTE FROM THE POEM TO SHOW HOE SASSOON’S VOICE DIFFERS IN THIS MOST PRIVATE OF POEMS. THERE’S SOME GOOD STUFF IN SARAH T’S ESSAY ON THIS.
This theme of public versus private can be seen in Regeneration too with Rivers. Rivers has a public persona as the steady, reliable doctor versus his private worries, ‘what do you do when the doctor breaks down?’ we also see Rivers’ private trauma. ‘’We-ell, it’s interesting that you were mute and that you’re one of the very few people in the hospital who doesn’t stammer.’ ‘It’s even more interesting that you do’Rivers was taken aback. ‘That’s different.’’ (Page 97).There is also a contrast between Sassoon not wanting his ‘letter’ to be published as it reveals the ‘real him’ too much and Rivers revealing his own trauma in his stammer and his doubts. This is his only private poem, as all the rest were used to get his views of the war across. There is one significant private part of Regeneration which this poem can be compared with. This is page 38-39 when Burns leaves the hospital and lies naked among the trees with animal corpses, ‘he felt a great urge to lie down beside them, but his clothes separated him,’ (page 39). This is a very private past of the novel because none of the other characters know what happened and it is never talked about again. This part of the novel can also be compared to ‘Repression of War Experience’, as Barker may have got her idea for this section from this poem. In ‘Letter to Robert Graves’ Sassoon mentions Rivers and says that he cheers him up, helps him and saves him. ‘And I fished in that steady grey stream’, Sassoon makes a pun on Rivers’ name and a metaphor for him, which is complimentary to Rivers because Sassoon talks about him in a letter to one of his dearest friends. This poem mentions ‘Jolly Otterleen’ who is ‘Ottoline Morrell’ (page 23), and a leader of the pacifist movement as well as one of Sassoon’s friends. She encouraged Sassoon to write the declaration as it will help the war, although it won’t help him.Overall, we can see many comparisons between Regeneration and Sassoon’s poetry, there are many parts of the poems that Barker may well have got her ideas from, such as, ‘Repression of War Experience’, ‘Does it Matter?’ and ‘Glory of Women’. The main comparison is with the voices they use, particularly indirect style as Sassoon uses it too in many of his poems, for example ‘The Death Bed’. Both the novel and the poetry are strong, influential and in some ways very similar, but many aspects are also very different.
YOU NEED A STRONGER CONCLUSION- HAVE A LOOK AT KYLE’S ESSAY WHICH IS ON LIGHTINGFOOLS- AND MAKE THE CHANGES I HAVE INDICATED. MOST IMPORTANTLY, YOU NEED TO LOK AT EVALUATING DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS- I’VE TRIED TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF HOW TO DO THIS IN THE TEXT OF YOUR ESSAY, BUT IT WILL BE WORTH YOUR WHILE TO LOOK THROUGH THE MARKING OF KYLE’S AND AIMEE’S AS WELL.

Y13: Kyle- here you go- you need to look at the different interpretations marking point, just as Aimee does- read my remarks on her essay as well, it wil help. This is very nearly there, though and will gain you a pleasing mark- you should be very happy with this!


kyle's first finished draft the end is weak in my opinion but i have a leat got a copy to u at last. I have added in the alteration you mentioned to do on tues so nearly there now.Pat Barker’s Regeneration PUT REGENERATION IN ITALICS ALL THE WAY THROUGH, PLEASE is a novel based around the inhabitants of Craiglockhart war hospital in Scotland and contains a mixture of fictional characters and fictionalized historical figures, such as Siegfried Sassoon and Captain W.H.R. Rivers. Barker maintains an informed historical perspective on both real and imagined events, along with a fresh approach to the well-trodden ground of novels about the Great War. Regeneration is concerned with the psychological and sociological consequences ofwar, rather than the battlefield itself.Barker’s novel can be described as polyphonic: her narrative is presented through a multiplicity of different voices reflecting the personalities, social backgrounds and viewpoints of her characters, meaning the story of the novel is composed of a variety of individual stories. The larger architecture of the novel helps present rounded characters and Barker’s third person narrator is able to dip in and out of their viewpoints using free indirect style, most definitely the dominant narrative technique of the novel. In contrast with Barker’s historical perspective, Siegfried Sassoon wrote most of his poetry contemporaneously with the war and his purpose was to present not only what he had personally experienced but also to make a political point: to help show his opposition to the war’s continuation and to highlight ‘political errors’. Not only this, he wanted to elicit sympathy for the suffering soldiers and help raise the public’s awareness of what they were going through.The often short, linguistically dense poems Sassoon wrote are much more emotionally direct that Barker’s more expansive, exploratory text. For example, the poem “Enemies” is a nightmarish, imagined encounter between soldiers (likely to be Sassoon’s own brother) stood among the “hulking Germans” the voice within the poem had “shot” and reduced to “patient, stupid, sullen ghosts of men”. Told almost certainly in Sassoon’s own, authentic, autobiographical voice, the poem shows the repercussions of the war on his psychology and imagination. This very hard-hitting, inescapably personal approach in Sassoon’s poetry is apparent in the talk of the Germans “that I shot/When for his death my brooding rage was hot”; a mission of vengeance that the voice finds ultimately unsatisfactory and even unexplainable. It is the dead Germans who, at the conclusion of the poem, can see why they were killed, not because of the voice’s explanations of his anger but “Because his face could make them understand”.
It is interesting however, that Rivers theorises that the fictionalized Sassoon of Regeneration may have recovered from war trauma so quickly because his poetry was a “therapeutic” way of him expressing his feelings, helping him to deal with his repressed memories, confused and conflicting emotions of sympathy and hatred and his horrifying nightmares. The reader can certainly see elements of this “therapeutic” benefit in a poem like “Enemies”.This tendency of Sassoon to use his own voice, which is often angry and satirical, yet frequently reveals, perhaps accidentally, the complexity of his own psychology and the war’s affect on it, is in contrast with the variety of individual character voices Barker very carefully ‘directs’ in her novel. GOD PASSAGE THIS, MAKING MATURE AND INSIGHTFUL JUDGEMENTS This is a major point of difference in narrative technique between the novel and the poetry: Sassoon’s voice may be complex, but it always remains recognisably Sassoon’s whereas Barker’s voice is disguised behind the characters she creates or fictionalizes for the novel. She does this so effectively by using free indirect style, giving her the ability to gain many perspectives on different situations and issues surrounding the war. Also, and perhaps more importantly, her use of free indirect style means she can maintain the advantages of the third person narrative perspective while allowing the reader to correspond with their individual personalities and backgrounds. This helps gain an intimacy with each character and develops a recognizable voice for the reader to identify with.For example, when Sassoon first has a conversation with Rivers at “afternoon tea” for new arrivals we hear his perspective describing the light on the curtains in the room as a “glimmering arc”, the poetic voice used helps the reader know who is talking. This mirrors an image in Sassoon’s poem “The Death Bed” – “Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve” – presenting Barker’s research into capturing a true to life voice for Sassoon. We can see something similar happening in the voice she creates for the character of Captain. Rivers. For example, as he heads down a corridor at Craiglockhart the narrative voice notes that “pipes lined the walls….gurgling from time to time like lengths of human intestine”. Here, the use of the medical reference helps the reader understands the description to be from Rivers’ viewpoint.Timothy Marshall, in his reflections on Mikhail Bakhtin’s discussion of free indirect style in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, comments that Dostoevsky’s novels contain many voices: “They are so because, in his view, language is constitutively intersubjective (Therefore social) and logically precedes subjectivity. It is never neutral, unaddressed, exempt from the aspirations of others. In his word it is dialogic”. This perspective deals with the idea that free indirect style is not the reader overhearing the voice or thoughts of the characters, but that the author is allowing the reader to hear what he wants us to pick up from the character, in order to grasp a better understanding about the individual. This therefore creates for the reader a recognizable voice, and one that we are almost “tricked” into believing is authentic because it is not the same as the author’s narrative voice. Sassoon’s voice in his poems insists that it is authentic because the reader is likely to know Sassoon himself experienced what he writes about. In contrast, Barker’s voices seem authentic because they are different from each other, making them seem individual and the novel be looked at as ‘polyphonic’ or ‘dialogic’ in structure. THIS IS GOOD, BUT YOU NEED TO LOOK AT EVIDENCE AND EVALUATE DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS- A MAJOR POINT IN THE MARKING SCHEME. SO, WHAT EVIDENCE IS THERE THAT BARKER IS GIVING US A GENUINELY POLYPHONIC NOVEL- LOTS OF DIFFERENT CONTRASTING VIEWPOINTS ON THE WAR- AND WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE THAT AL THE VOICES ARE REALLY ONE VOICE- HERS. AFTER ALL, THISE WHO D NOT BELIIVE IN PSYCHOLOGICAL INJURIES, LIKE LANGDON FOR EXAMPLE, ARE GIVEN NO NARRATIVE SPACE. LOOK TOO AT MY MARKING OF AIMEE’S ESSAY FOR FURTHER REMARKS ON THIS SUBJECTTo help grasp a fuller understanding and gain a further insight into how Pat Barker uses free indirect style, to help identify voices we can concentrate on one character, Billy Prior. Within Billy Prior’s own individual story, Pat Barker dives into his past along with both his sociological and psychological rehabilitation inside the novel. We are first introduced to Billy Prior as a mute Second Lieutenant who cannot communicate with anyone apart from through the use of a pen and pad. The way in which Pat Barker presents this not necessarily his voice, but certainly his means of communication through the pad is important, as Prior always writes in capital letters “I DON’T REMEMBER”. This IS when Prior is being asked what his nightmares are about as a way of Rivers helping his rehabilitation. So the introduction of Prior shows him as always being angry through the use of the capital letters on the pad, although Prior himself argues that capitals are simply ‘clearer’ and Rivers thinks he maybe trying to disguise his handwriting so that it can’t be analysed.
Prior is seen as being very much a man not willing to share information about anything purely because he does not ‘REMEMBER’. Apart from this, we at first are not able to gainany more information about Prior at this stage. YES- YOU COULD EXTEND THIS POINT- WHEN PRIOR IS LARGELY ‘HIDDEN’ FROM RIVERS BY HIS MUTISM HE IS ALSO HIDDEN FROM THE READER BY THE LACK OF INSIGHT THE NARRATIVE GIVES INTO HIS INTERNAL LIFE.
Prior’s muteness is gone in Regeneration when wakes up “shouting” we begin to gain more detail about his true voice which has a distinctly “northern accent”. In a conversation with Rivers we see prior’s resistance to talk about what he has gone through. “I don’t think talking helps. It just churns things up” he says. It is not that he does not want to be helped but just that he finds it hard to confront his emotions.

When Prior does begin to slightly open up he adopts a different voice, a satirical one aimed at higher ranked soldiers “The pride of the British army…”. This helps to show Prior’s anger and sarcasm towards the army and he goes on to described how he was in a dugout in “no mans land” for forty-eight hours” and had to stay there while him and his soldiers were bombarded with “one shell after the other”. Prior’s voice now has been able to develop and give the reader a more rounded look on him as a character and start to identify his voice as an individual. The satirical voice also appears in confrontations with Rivers about his own stammer “lucky for you, I mean…if your stammer was the same as theirs – you might actually have to sit down and work out what it is you’ve spent fifty years trying not to say”. GOOD PASSAGE, THIS

The confrontational voice towards Rivers- a person, in Prior’s eyes, in seeming power- can be compared with the satirical voices adopted in Sassoon’s poetry “The General”. For example, in the poem “The General” has a seemingly cheery outlook “Good morning, good morning” which makes him perceive to have no sympathy at all. THIS IS POORLY EXPRESSED- YOU NEED TO SHOW HOW THE GENERAL’S CHEERY GREETING CLEARLY IGNORES THE REALITY OF THE SITUATION AND IS THEREFORE THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT IT APPEARS TO BE- CALLOUS, RATHER THAN CHEERFUL AND CARING. He is seen to have smiled at soldiers even though he knows “most of ‘em dead” or that is what is awaiting them. The young boys, however, are inevitably going to die “by his plans of attack”.

YOU NEED TO DEFINE LYRIC AND EPIC VOICES- LOOK AT YOUR NOTES AND AGAIN, MY MARKING OF AIMEE’S ESSAY.The satirical voice and epic voice Sassoon uses is very similar to the way Barker manipulates Prior’s own actions towards Rivers in some respects. The epic voice being Sassoon’s way of showing his own disgust and anger towards the war, which is evident here. However, his lyric, therapeutic voice comes out in the poem “Letter to Robert Graves” something he never wanted published. Where he is able to bear all and deal with some inner emotions he was experiencing. He uses his lyric voice to deal with issues concerning his injury, “the bloody bullet missed its mark”. The use of black humour to present it may have been better to kill him.AGAIN, EPRESSION HERE IS UNCLEAR He also covers a deeper CONCERN that Sassoon often portrays the love between him and his troops for example “I made them love me. Although they didn’t want to do it”. Something that in Regeneration is the overriding reason he decides to go back “for his troops”. The lyric voice that Sassoon adopts here is a more sombre one as he confronts issues dealing with his injury and the feelings towards his troops this vulnerability within Sassoon could possibly be the reason he did not want this piece published. GOOD POINT HAVE A LOOK AT THE PASSAGE BELOW, THOUGH, WHICH GIVES YOU A NOTION OF THE SORT OF DETAILED ANALYSIS YOU NEED FOR THE HIGHER BANDS:


In ‘Counter Attack’ by Sassoon, he gives the account of a battle. The poem features several extremely lengthy sentences, ‘We held their line,
With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,
And clink of shovels deepening the shallow
trench.’
This shows the pace of the event and the sheer amount of tasks being carried out. The poem’s almost diary-like tone gives the reader an insight into the poet’s mind, or at least an impression of authenticity. It is likely therefore that the content of the poem will be sensationalised and exaggerated, the opening line, ‘we’d gained our first objective hours before’, for example, could be interpreted as sounding like an adventure for the soldiers. The poem is written as if Sassoon is talking to the reader, the endless clauses replicating speech. This style may have been intentionally used so as to appear more real and thus shocking to the reader.
Through the relationship with Sarah Lumb we are able to gain a different person’s viewpoint on the war and the consequences of this on the people and society in general. We are also able to draw both contrasting and comparative aspects with Sassoon’s poetry through the character of Sarah Lumb. She is first introduced to us at a café in Edinburgh where her voice is at first very much representative of her character. She is a hard working northern woman paid just “fifty bob a week”. This character may also not only be a love interest for Prior but in another way a tool for Barker to portray something she has a lot of knowledge of and is a common theme in her other novels, such as Union Street. Sarah Lumb brings a woman’s point of view to matters. Sarah’s interaction with Prior develops through the NOVELand we dip often into her own mind on numerous occasions with the use of free indirect style.
The first instance of this is when Sarah and Madge go to visit Madge’s injured husband in hospital. As Sarah walks around the hospital corridors, she notices “none of these men was badly wounded”. As she continues through the hospital, she finds herself lost and then enters an area where she becomes very “aware of a silence…..by her entrance”. The free and indirect style used here by Barker is to show Sarah’s own voice and reaction to “a row of figures in wheelchairs”. This helps give an account of every thing she is seeing and through voicing her opinions, we can gain how she feels about it all. These people hidden away with “trouserlegs sewn short: empty sleeves pinned to jackets” are also something Sassoon covers in two of his owns poems “Glory Of Woman” and to some extent in “Does it Matter”. “Glory Of Women” can almost seems based on Sarah Lumb’s own character when she uses the line “You make us shells” when referring to women during the war, which could link to Regeneration as Sarah’s actual job is that very thing; another example of possibly how Barker constructs the voices of her own characters by using examples and researching into Sassoon’s poetry. The final line by Sassoon in his very single-minded satirical voice which presents the idea of the delusional vision that some women have of their men fighting in the war “knitting socks to send your son, / His face being trodden deeper into the mud”. This portrait of how many women at this time thought and how unaware they were of the actual brutality and atrocities that were taking place is certainly defensible historically, but Sassoon can still be accused of telling only part of the story and being rather patronizing towards women here.

Sassoon’s very blunt point of view is one Barker challenges through the voice of Sarah Lumb. Sarah becomes very angry about the way these soldiers are hidden away and concludes that “If the country demanded that price, then it should bloody be well prepared to look at the result”. Her own voice here is showing the anger at mistreatment that she felt these men were enduring. This attitude almost mirrors Sassoon’s views in “Glory For Women” – Sarah’s voice, or the voice of a woman when one is allowed to speak, Barker seems to be arguing, is closer to Sassoon’s own personal voice than perhaps he would be comfortable with. Sarah Lumb’s voice in Regeneration helps to bring in a female perspective on the war and lets a woman voice her opinion in a very male-dominated novel. AGAIN, WORTH EXPANDING THIS- IS IT A MALE – DOMINATED NOVEL JUST BECAUSE MOST OF THE CHARACTERS ARE MALE, OR ARE THE FEMALE WRITER, THE FEMALE VOICES WITHIN IT AND THE ‘FEMININE’ CONCERNS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES RATHER THAN ACTION-PACKED BATTLE SCENES OF PAIN AND GLORY ENOUGH TO ACTUAL MAKE IT A ‘FEMININE’ NOVEL. WORTH EVALUATING FOR ‘DIFERENT INTERPRETATIONS’ MARKS.
“Does It Matter?” is another poem by Sassoon which demonstrates his frustration with the war. This is shown by Sassoon thorough the use of his epic voice. This poem also can be closely compared with the character of Sarah Lumb in Regeneration and her attitude to the treatment of the patients in the hospital. This attitude is mirrored within the poem “Does It Matter – losing your legs?” Sassoon’s own voice narrating is clearly satirical and reflecting his own personal feelings once again. This satirical voice continues with the use of the line “splendid work for the blind” and “turning your face to the light” the best you can now hope for to gain any glimpse of colours and seeming light. Through Sassoon’s structure of this poem we are able to see how THIS SENTIMENT can be truly seen as patronising. He uses a ridiculously jolly rhyming scheme, almost nursery rhyme-like, to help enhance the satire in his voice and poke fun at a very serious situation. Using this method, he presents an ironic distance with himself using this jolly rhyming scheme to portray ideas of mutilation. This is where Sassoon’s satirical voice is arguably connected with his lyric voice and can be a way of helping him therapeutically deal with the trauma of war. NICELY ARGUED AND A SOPHISTICATED POINT.

This carries through into the final line of the poem “And no one will worry a bit” this an example of how the public’s view of the war and all would be altered if they only knew the trouble soldiers went through. This can be closely linked to Sassoon’s own personal views, which are voiced right from the beginning of Regeneration within his Declaration where he talks “the endured suffering of the troops”.Other poems also within Sassoon’s work which help us see him in a different light is “To the Warmongers” with a one-stanza structure containing short lines to increase the speed it is to be read at. With a simple rhyme scheme, the pace of the poem is increased even further. The tone of the poem shows Sassoon’s lyric voice coming through presenting his seeming opinions on the war. The powerful short lines such as “I’m back form hell” and “Moan out there brutish pain” show Sassoon’s anger towards these people who want the continuation of the war. By looking at the time, it was written we can see this is just before he wrote his deceleration where he even states his protest for “those who are suffering”. The poem coming in my opinion from Sassoon’s own voice and producing a hard hitting poem of his own personal thoughts relating to the war. This run parallel to the portrayal of him in Regeneration as Pat Barker shows him upset in the bar at the golf club whilst looking at the old men sitting around discussing their views on the war. This most likely a tool used by Barker again using Sassoon’s own poetry to help construct a more true to life voice for his own character Representation. GOOD POINT, WORTH EXPANDING

Another poem where Sassoon challenges outsiders views and opinions in the war is in “Great Men”. Here we see his satirical voice used again to poke fun at other parts of the army “Talk our noble sacrifice and losses”. Sassoon here again aiming his views at people in power who seemingly want the war to continue but know nothing of the actual going s on within the war. This relating within Regeneration relating to not only Sassoon’s character but Priors own views which I earlier mentioned.Within the poem “The Death Bed”, we begin to see the darker side of Sassoon’s poetry, which helps reveal an even deeper side to his lyric voice. The inevitable awaiting for the passing of a soldier and the personification of “death” having its own voice helps Sassoon communicate a deeper meaning. This idea of the character drifting in and out of consciousness “through crimson gloom to darkness” along with the actual character of death “who’d stepped toward him” really emphasizes the trauma that Sassoon experienced during the war and something he is trying to overcome at this point.

Through these sorts of poems Rivers believes that Sassoon was able to overcome “war neurosis” so quickly. The coming to terms and dealing with death in this way helps Sassoon in his rehabilitation immensely. A similar poem in respects of dealing with aspects to do with the war itself is in “Counter Attack”. Sassoon once again here uses voices within his poem “Stand-to and man the fire-step!” to the poem a more realistic feel. He again here voices his attitude towards death “Down he sank and drowned, / Bleeding to death” this IS another example of how through his poetry Sassoon is able to voice his inner feeling and release things that other people suffering “war neurosis” find hard to do. Whilst looking through both pieces we can see clear differences in the voices used although some comparisons can also be made. Within Part Barker’s Regeneration she is able to adopt many different voices through her clever use of free indirect style. Such characters as Billy Prior and Sarah Lumb are tools which Barker uses in order to sometimes disguise her own opinions and thoughts about the war. Barker through thorough research is able to capture Sassoon’s voice even more true to life with references to her own work. This is also evident in her fictionalised characters where pieces of Sassoon poetry are also evident. Sassoon on the other hand deals with his poetry as a tool to convey his true feelings on things and voice personal opinion form someone who has experienced it all. Through the structure and rhythm of his poems Sassoon is able to voice the way in which he would like his poems to be perceived when read by a novice. Along with his usage of the epic, lyric and satirical voices, Sassoon poetry can be seen as a release as well a way for him to promote his own political feelings about the “continuance” of the war and to place the people in charge in a position of BEING BROADLY SATIRISED

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Y13: Aimie- your first complete draft, marked. Please note particularly the comments at the end and remember I need you final draft by the 9th. I'll bring a hard copy to school next week.


Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration PUT REGENERATION IN ITALICS THROUGHOUT is set in the PSYCHIATRIC war hospital, Craiglockhart just outside of Edinburgh. Barker uses fictional and fictionalised characters throughout Regeneration with one of the main characters being W.H.S Rivers, one of the hospital’s doctors. WHY MENTION RIVERS PARTICULARLY, RATHER THAN SASSOON- THE OTHER CANDIDATE FOR THE TITLE OF CENTRAL CHARACTER. Be they fictional or fictionalised, Barker uses her characters to allow the reader an insight into the psychological consequences of The Great War on a variety of soldiers and civilians. She does this by favouring the first person voice YOU NEED TO REPHRASE THIS- THE NOVEL IS IN THE THIRD PERSON AFTER ALL, IT’S JUST THAT THE USE OF FREE INDIRECT STYLE ALLOWS BARKER TO ALSO EXLPLOIT MANY OF THE ADVANTAGES OF FIRST PERSON PERSEPECTIVE, ESPECIALLY PSYCHOLOGICAL TRANSPARENCY which allows the reader to understand a particular character’s feelings, views and opinions on the war, and therefore the consequences of it. She skilfully balances this with a presentation of the social consequences of The Great War, which she reflects through the third person perspective which is the default narrative viewpoint of the novel. We see the social consequences through civilians on the home front, as well as from soldiers and doctors at Craiglockhart.
Barker takes a fresh new approach to writing a war novel in this sense as she doesn’t focus on the battlefield itself, like so many war novel authors choose to do. She wanted to explore her techniques as a writer and break away from her typical style – writing about working-class northern women. As Barker has so many vivid characters her choice to narrate in the third person is a wise one. She makes Regeneration a polyphonic novel through the use of free indirect style which allows her to have more then one voice and to drop into all her characters heads, making them psychologically transparent. THIS IS BETTER, BUT YOU’RE REALLY GOING OVER THE SAME GROUND AS YOU DO ABOVE- UNIFY THE TWO SETS OF COMMENTS, IT WILL SAVE ON WORDCOUNT TOO This gives the novel more depth and movement, as Barker is not restricting her novel to one perspective.

Regeneration was written as a demonstration to Barker’s critics that she could write about men in a male environment as it was something she had never done before YOU NEED TO MENTION HERE THAT SHE ARGUALBLY MAINTAINS A MORE ‘FEMALE’ PERSPECTIVE BY INCORPORATING THE EXPERIENCE OF CIVILIAN WOMEN AS WELL AS MILITARY MEN. She also wanted to take a different approach to a war novel by focusing on the consequences of the battlefield, not the battlefield itself.
In contrast with Barker’s historical perspective, writing as she did with a modern sensibility about the war and almost 80 years after the event took place, Siegfried Sassoon was writing contemporaneously with The Great War. As A FICTIONALIZED VERSION OF SASSOON is one of Barker’s main characters, she has featured some of his poetry in Regeneration and SHE OPENS HER NOVEL WITH the Declaration he wrote which lead to his ADMISSION TO Craiglockhart. There are a many contrasts between Barker and Sassoon with the main one being that Barker wrote a novel and Sassoon wrote a collection of poetry. This leads to a vast difference in style and purpose AND NARRATIVE VOICE. Sassoon’s poetry tends to be very brief and powerful getting his point across firmly in an emotive manner. He presents his poetry with a single voice, choosing his language carefully due to the BREVITY of his writing and the need of an instant reaction. The purpose of Sassoon’s poetry was to make a political point as he became strongly apposed to the war. He also wanted to show civilians back at home what the war was really like for the soldiers involved. He wanted to show that it was bloody and ruthless and that many young men died needlessly. His Declaration is A SUMMATION OF THIS INTENTION and in some ways is the starting point for BOTH Sassoon’s voice as a soldier-POET and Barker’s ORCHESTRATION of many voices.

SASSOON’S poetry is emotive as he is writing from first hand experience at the time it was happening, unlike Barker whose text is the product of research and literary imagination. Where Sassoon’s poetry IS mostly directed through a single voice, Barker writes in a more discursive manner due to the polyphonic style of the novel. This is also achievable because she is writing a novel so has more time to explore different ideas. GOOD DISCUSSION, BUT AGAIN YOU REPEAT A LOT OF SIMILAR IDEAS- HAVE A GO AT CUTTING THIS DOWN.
GOOD STUFF SO FAR AIMIE BUT IT BOTHERS ME THAT YOU HAVE GOT THIS FAR WITHOUT A QUOTATION- ILLUSTRATE F.I.S WITH A QUOTE OR TWO, SASSOON’S STYLE WITH A QUOTE OR TWO, THE DECLARATION WITH A QUOTE OR TWO.
It is vital FOR THE SUCCESS OF Barker’S NOVEL THAT SHE allows her characters to speak for themselves without smothering them with her own opinionS. However the absenCE of Barker’s voice is not complete from the novel. Through free indirect style Barker manages to perform a narrative trick by telling us what she wants the reader to think about a character “Small blue eyes, nibbled gingery moustache” tells us what Anderson looks like and that the war may have made him a nervous man from the description of his moustache, and “Mr Prior looked him shrewdly up and down” informs the reader that Mr Prior may be a crafty man. NOTE ALSO ‘MR PRIOR’, NOT SIMPLE PRIOR OR BILLY.

Another way in which Barker’s voice can be heard throughout the novel is by the amount of narrative space she gives each character. Barker clearly believes that neurasthenia does exist therefore gives more narrative space to characters who share her opinion, like Rivers. Free indirect style not only allows us to see what the character with the narrative DUTIES sees, it also allows us TO hear a characters’ thought process. “After all, why not?” shows us Sassoon thinking things over in his head and justifying his response. YOU NEED TO EXTEND AND CONTEXTUALIZE THIS QUOTE-DOESN’T MAKE A LOT OF SENSE ON ITS OWN. This can only be done through this narrative technique and allows Barker to show the reader a very personal side to each character. Burns, a PATIENT at Craiglockhart, was thrown by an explosion face first into a rotting corpse. When Rivers is talking to him about upsetting other people and Burns mentions that he wouldn’t have to worry about upsetting anyone if he could eat in his own room, Barker writes from Rivers’ perspective “Yes, Burns would worry about upsetting other people”. This tells us that Rivers is disagreeing in his head with what Burns has just said. We know he hasn’t said it out loud as there are no speech marks and Burns doesn’t enforce his own comment. River’s thought also tells us something about Burns. It shows us that Burns is a generally nice guy as he worries about his actions upsetting others. THIS IS ALL OKAY BUT A LITTLE WEAK IN EXPRESSION- ESPECIALLY ‘GENERALLY A NICE GUY’ This idea is reinforced when we see through free indirect style that Rivers is thinking to himself “He’s agreeing to make me feel useful, he thought”. “he thought” YOU’RE CONFUSED HERE- THE VERY FACT THAT BARKER USES ‘HE THOUGHT’ MEANS THIS IS NOT F.I.S- THE WHOLE POINT OF F.I.S IS THAT IT IS INDIRECT- ‘HE THOUGHT’ MAKES IT DIRECT- A DIRECT TRANSCRITION OF THE CHARACTER’S THOUGHTS EMBEDDED IN THE NARRATIVE, AS OPPOSED TO THE STYLE OF THE CHARACTER INFLUENCING THE STYLE AND VIEWPOINT OF THE NARRATIVE ITSELF. is the key part of the sentence as it gives the reader the knowledge that it was a look inside his head at his thoughts, not just third person narration. Burn’s worries about upsetting other people demonstrate some of the social consequences of the war. When Burns tries to eat he is violently sick due to his experience. This means he can no longer eat in public due to his embarrassment but not just that, he will affect everyone around him as well. Prior’s experiences lead to him being psychologically affected by the war as we see through his hypnosis. His hypnosis can by closely linked to Sassoon’s ‘Counter- Attack’ as it is based on memories of an event. The hypnosis, through free indirect style, tells us about the specific point that leads him to Craiglockhart as we see it through his eyes. He woke up to the smell of “stale farts”: his own TYPICALLY RAW interpretation of the smell of the trenches. YOU NEED A LOT MORE ANALYSIS OF HOW THIS EPISODE SHOWS PRIOR’S PERSONALITY Rivers is allowing him to remember what happened by taking him back to the trenches in France. As Prior became mute he wanted to find out the cause of it. Another advantage of free indirect style is that it allows there to be a change of time, setting or character without having to explain to the reader what is happening. We can see this before Prior’s hypnosis begins as he is talking to Rivers and then is back in France.

Barker shows a change in time, setting or character by beginning a new paragraph, making it clear a change has happened. What Barker wanted to depict with Prior was that he was from a working class background but was an officer, a title USUALLY ASSOCIATED WITH A well educated middle class man. Many of the soldiers would have suffered from mutism because if they were to say something negative about the war’s cause or reasons for fighting, the consequences would have been catastrophic, plus no one would have listened. However, officers tended to stutter or stammer due to the psychological effects of the war, like Rivers’ increasing stutter, “That’s d-different” and Sassoon’s stammer, “or or otherwise” which is a complete contrast to his poetry, where he writes in a clear manner with complete fluidity. NOT SURE WHAT YOU’RE DOING WITH THIS- NOBODY WRITES WITH A STAMMER. THERE MAY BE A POINT HERE ABOUT THE THERAPEUTIC NATURE OF THE POETRY THOUGH- THE VOICE SASSOON GIVES TO HIS EMOTIONS IN CONTRAST WITH THE MUTISM THAT INCREASES PRIOR’S TRAUMA STIL FURTHER This was because an officer was more likely to be listened to. It is almost as if the soldier’s subconscious is preventing them from speaking to save a disciplinary ACTION. As Prior is from a working class background and has been looked down on by other officers and even Rivers at first, he is showing the psychological effects of the war of a soldier not an officer.

Here it is possible to hear Barker’s opinion and voice coming through again as she can relate to Prior as they were both working class. It also feels like Barker is having a go at society at the time of The Great War for still having prejudices about social class at a time when everyone was in the same position, they were at war as one. Barker portrays Prior’s mutism by making him write down what he wants to say. Rivers observES Prior, waiting for him to answer his question ON WHEN HE FIRST LOST HIS ABILITY TO SPEAK Prior replies to him by writing “I DON’T REMEMBER.”. Not only is Prior mute but he is also angry, maybe at not knowing why he is mute, maybe for being in hospital when he wants to be back at the front or maybe because people like Sister Rogers have taken a PATRONISING ATTITUDE to him and he feels Rivers might as well. We know he is angry as he writes in block capitals so it appears he is shouting. YOU NEED TO MAKE THIS MORE EXPLICITYLY LINKED WITH THE IDEA OF SOCIAL VOICES IN THE NARRATIVE- DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE WAY PRIOR AND SARAH SPEAK AT ONE END AND SASSON AND ALANGDON AT THE OTHER AND HOW OTHER CHARACTERS RESPOND TO THEM BECAUSE OF IT. I’D PUT THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH, WHICH DOES THIS BETTER, BEOFRE THE BIT ABOUT PRIOR TO ANNOUNCE WHAT YOU’RE DOINGAnother area that Barker looks at is the social voices of characters and the language they use. THAT’S WHAT YOU’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF PARAGRAPHS The majority of the characters in Regeneration are officers therefore are well spoken. We know this as Barker writes in well-spoken tone to reflect her characters. However characters like Billy Prior and Sarah Lumb are from working backgrounds, so Barker reflects this by the language she uses. When Prior is around Sarah, a northern girl, his roots come out and he starts to relax the manner in which he talks. “I always paddle with me boots on” shows that he has dropped the “my” for a “me” making a grammatically INcorrect sentence. Also the fact that Prior is using a metaphor to talk about contraception helps emphasisE his social class.HOW’S THAT THEN? WOULD A M/CLASS MAN BE MORE LIKELY TO SAY ‘I ALWAYS WEAR A CONDOM’ ? Sarah however understands his metaphor. It is possible to see River’s snobbery emerge when Prior’s voice returns. We hear through free indirect style that “hearing Prior’s voice for the first time had the curious effect of making him look different” to River’s. In the real world Rivers would never have to associate with men like Prior as they are from different words, yet Prior is from a working class background and the same rank as Sassoon, something River’s was not aware of.

Similarly, the reader encountetrs Sarah’s voice and accent through her speech, “Aye, and they can stop there ‘n’ all”. Ada Lumb tries to correct Sarah’s grammar, “You don’t say “what”, Sarah. You say “pardon””, but then she mispronounces “gunna”, “gotta” and “mebbe”. She is aware that it more socially acceptable to be well spoken and wants Sarah to be socially accepted. GOOD CLOSE ANALYSIS HERE. Ada may feel that Sarah and herself can hide the fact they are working class by speaking in a more educated manner, as when she speaks to strangers she “switches to her genteel voice”, trying to sound refined and courteous. Barker uses phonetic misspelling and dialect to show the social effects of the war on all members of society, not just the soldier as is by and large the case with war novels. It also brings a contrast between the different characters of the novel, Prior’s Manchester and Sarah’s northern accent juxtapose Rivers’ and Sassoon’s educated dialect. Sassoon, in his poetry, also adds voices making his officer characters possess a “stiff upper lip” euphemistic language. GOOD PASSAGE, THIS
Throughout his poetry, Sassoon tends to narrate in his own voice, LINK THIS TO THE PREVIOUS BIT BY TALKING ABOUT THE WAY SASSOON UNDERCUTS THE EUPEMISTIC LANGUAGE OF THE OFFICERS WITH HIS RAW, DETAILED, UNFLINCHING, BRUTAL VOICE however THERE ARE SIGNS OF WHAT TS ELIOT CALLS THE THREE VOICES OF POETRY IN HIS WORK (YOU MAY AS WELL NAME THE CRITIC AND GET THE AO4 POINT IN AS WELL!); the lyric voice, the epic voice and the dramatic voice. The majority of Sassoon’s writing is written with an epic voice as he is trying to drum up sympathy for the soldiers fighting and loosing their lives. In ‘Repression of War Experiences’ PUT TITLES OF POEMS INTO QUOTATION MARKS THROUGHOUT Sassoon writes in an epic voice, saying that the cause of neurasthenia is mainly down to repressing memories of the war. “And it’s been proven that soldiers don’t go mad unless they lose control of ugly thoughts that drive them out to jabber among the trees”. QUOTE POETRY LINE-FOR-LINE. Sassoon, through writing his poetry, has not repressed his feelings on the war and has managed to help himself by writing out his dark memories. However this extract from Repression of War Experiences tells the reader that there are plenty of men who have tried to bury their experiences with the hope that the memories would go away. This leads them to have severe mental breakdowns leading to irrational behaviour. We see in Regeneration that Burns, one of Barker’s fictional characters, has an episode in the woods. “He stood again in front of the tree” is Burn’s memories and experiences leading him to do exactly what Sassoon wrote about in Repression of War Experiences. The chances that Barker took this event of Burn’s from this poem of Sassoon’s are almost definite as he is a reflection of what Sassoon describes. Even though Sassoon showed “no obvious signs of nervous disorder” according to Rivers, we see from Repression of War Experiences that he hears guns being fired and shells going off, “you can hear the guns…I’m going crazy”. Sassoon’s poetry works in the same way as Rivers hypnosis and encouragement to remember war experiences.

‘Counter-Attack’ is based on Sassoon’s memories or events that he is sure would have happened, as it was first drafted in the trenches. This poem contains an epic voice again with evidence of a satire and political voice also. “An officer came blundering down the trench…”Fire-step…counter-attack!”” has the clear-cut image of no strong authority in the trenches. Sassoon uses the elision to show the panic in the officer’s voice and his clear lack of leadership skills. Sassoon is using this officer to make the point that many platoons are lead by men who are not capable of leading. The soldiers “sank and drowned, bleeding to death” like so many of the young men fighting in the war. This is why Sassoon tells River “I’m going back” because we wants his men to have a fighting chance. This poem can also be linked with Prior’s hypnosis as they are both written as memories.

SOME GOOD POINTS OF COMAPRISON AND CONTRAST HERE Barker’s free indirect style allows us to see into Prior’s past, where similarly Sassoon uses free indirect style to allow us to see the perspectives of different people in the trench. Sassoon, like Barker doesn’t completely focus his poetry on the battlefield itself. He tries to show the consequences of the war for soldiers who are no longer at war with the enemy, but are still fighting with their war demons, having to live with the mental and physical scars and memories. In Does it Matter, Sassoon demonstrates this point well. He writes with an angry voice which projects through the irony throughout the poem. “Does it matter? – losing your sight? There’s such splendid work for the blind” demonstrates his irony. He is reflecting this poem on societies attitudes towards war victims pointing out that society will see that a soldier is still alive and expect him to be grateful and get on with it. Sassoon tries to point out that a soldier losing his eyes doesn’t affect his sight as he can still see all the terrible things that took place in the trenches. The structure of Does it Matter? is very different FROM that of Counter-Attack as it is a short, powerful poem that is made punchy by the use of grammar. Each line forms a unit of sense as there is a natural pause at the end, adding emphasis to the last word. This makes the poem sound hard and gives it a clear rhythm which helps stress the point of the poem. Also Sassoon’s use of punctuation, mainly the placement of elision, causes pauses and allows the reader to ponder what he has just said, “losing your leg?...”, “losing your sight?...”. GOOD DETAILED ANALYSIS In Regeneration we can see Sarah shares the frustration that Sassoon does. We know through Barker’s use of free indirect style that she gives Sarah the opinion of “if the country demand the price, then it should bloody well be prepared to look at the result” when she stumbles across a hidden ward at the hospital full of physically mutated men. Glory of Women looks at similar ideas as Does it Matter? As it explores men’s fears that women don’t want to know about what actually went on in the trenches, they want to think of their men as “heroes”. Sassoon writes this in an angry voice using only one voice through the poem. He believes that women only want to look at wounds “in a mentionable place” because they don’t want a handicapped man. Barker however takes a more sympathetic approach making Sarah feel that “Simply by being there…, a pretty girl, she had made everything worse.” Letter to Robert Graves is what THE TITLE IMPLIES, : it is a lyrical poem using Sassoon’s person voice, therefore his personal experiences, throughout. It is a therapeutic poem as he tells Graves about his experiences in the trenches. “I timed my death in action to the minute”, shows how unhappy Sassoon was in the battlefield. He depicts his state of mind when he was in a hospital by showing how he had no sense of time, “MarshMoonStreetMeiklejohnArdoursandenduranSitwellitis” as everyone who visited him merged into one. However Sassoon writing poetry has helped him through his war dilemmas, as did Burn’s episode in the woods. Yet more evidence of free indirect style can by seen in Regeneration when Barker writes “now they could dissolve into the earth as they were meant to do” THIS IS CLEARLY BURNS’ VICE IN FREE INDIRECT STYLE, RATHER THAN A COMMENT BY BARKER AS THE NARRATOR when Burns puts all the dead animals on the ground. It is therapeutic as he feels as if he is giving his fellow soldiers the dignity of being allowed to dissolve into the ground, like the animals, and rest peacefully.
The General is a polyphonic poem ARGUALBLY- YOU NEED TO MAKE THE POINT THAT THE VOICES ARE NOHWERE NEAR AS THREE-DIMENSIONAL AND FULLY REALISED AS THEY ARE IN THE NOVEL as Sassoon includes the General’s voice, Harry’s voice – a soldier – and his own voice. It is an epic poem making a political statement. Sassoon is protesting on behalf of all the dead soldier, Harry and Jack, who died by the “General’s” “plan of attack”. This poem is similar to Counter-Attack as we hear Sassoon’s voice in the poem as an angry protest against the way Generals were leading their men. Through Barker’s research for Regeneration she would have become aware of Sassoon’s views on the generals at the war front and subsequently lets the reader know this by allowing Sassoon to say “they don’t give a damn about the “Bobbies” and the “Tommies””. Both Sassoon and Barker base their writing around the time of The First World War – 1917 – and both portray the effects it had on a different level then other war poets and war novelists. They both independently include the use of imaginary voices in their work through free indirect style allowing for many view points to be considered thus making their work polyphonic. Although MUCH of Sassoon’s poems contain only one narrative voice, he has the ability to change the tone giving his poems different meanings and addressing different members of society. Barker sets her novel in one location being Craiglockhart, with the exception of flash backs. Regeneration is, according to Jackie Wullschlager, “caged in a distinct time and place” thus weakening the novel. However, it could be said that the purpose of Craiglockhart being the main location, and the lack of description Barker provides for it, are necessary to portray the intensity of each character’s war neurosis. It is as if Barker mimics their memories of the war, which are locked in one place - each mans head - by only giving the characters one place to go, hence allowing her the opportunity to let these memories boil inside each man then explode INTERESTING IDEA THAT YOU EED TO TAKE FURTHER- CRAIGLOCKHART AS AN ORCCHESTRA OF MANY VOICES, SASSOON’S POETRY AS MANY ASPECTS OF A SINGLE VOICE.

THIS IS NEARLY 4,000 WORDS WITH MY COMMENTS INCLUDED, BUT I’VE GIVEN YOU SOME IDEAS OF WHERE TO CUT IT DOWN AND IMPROVE IT. BASICALLY, WHAT YOU NEED IS BETTER AO4- TO QUOTE FROM THE MARK SCHEME ‘CLEAR CONSIDERATION OF DIFFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS OF TEXTS WITH AN EVAKUATION OF THEIR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES AND CLEAR EVIDENCE OF PERSONAL RESPONSE WITH TEXTUAL SUPPORT’. FOR EXAMPLE, IF YOU PHRASE YOUR DISCUSSION DIFFERENTLY, YOU CAN DO THIS THROUGH YOUR POINTS ABOUT BARKER’S VOICE NOT BEING SILENT- ONE INTERPRETATION IS THAT THE NOVEL IS POLYPHONIC AND THE CHARACTERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES, ANOTHER IS THAT BARKER NEVER DOES MORE THAN A VENRILOQUIST ACT- ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE ASPECTS OF HER AND NONE OF THEM SAY ANYTHING SHE WOULD FIND DISTASTEFUL. LINK THIS WITH SASSOON’S POETRY- HE IS MUCH MORE HNEST ABOUT HAVING A SINGLE, PROTESTING VOICE- HIS OWN- AND YET THE DIFERENCE BETWEEN THE PUBLISHED POEMS AND ‘LETTER TO RG’ SHOWS HIS PUBLIC VOICE IS MUCH MORE OF AN ARTISTRIC CONSTRUCT THAN MOST READERS ASSUME- OR IS IT? THIS IS THE SORT OF THING YOU NEED TO TO TO GET AN A OR B. BEST OF LUCK!

y13: Kyle- this will be yours then, marked. Very good so far, and you've even go a critical comment in it, so that's AO4 at least covered. I've given you an idea at the end of where to take it from here.


Pat Barker’s Regeneration is a novel based around the inhabitants of Craiglockhart war hospital in Scotland IN 1917 and contains a mixture of fictional characters and fictionalized historical figures, such as Siegfried Sassoon and Captain W.H.R. Rivers. Barker maintains an informed historical perspective on both real and imagined events, along with a fresh approach to the well-trodden ground of novels about the Great War: Regeneration is concerned with the psychological and sociological consequences of war experience, rather than with the battlefield itself.Barker’s novel can be described as polyphonic: her narrative is presented through a multiplicity of different voices reflecting the personalities, social backgrounds and viewpoints of her characters, meaning the story of the novel is composed of this variety of individual stories. The larger architecture of the novel helps present rounded characters and Barker’s third person narrator is able to dip in and out of their viewpoints using free indirect style, perhaps the dominant narrative technique of the novel. In contrast with Barker’s historical perspective, Siegfried Sassoon wrote most of his poetry contemporaneously with the war and his purpose was to present not only what he had personally experienced but also to make a political point: to help show his opposition to the war’s continuation and to highlight, “political errors”. Not only this, he wanted to elicit sympathy for the suffering soldiers and help raise the public’s attention about what they were going through. VERY GOOD SO FAR, KYLE.The often short, linguistically dense poems Sassoon wrote are much more emotionally direct than Barker’s more expansive, exploratory text. For example the poem “Enemies” is a nightmarish imagined encounter between a soldier (likely to be Sassoon’s own brother) stood among the “hulking Germans” the voice of the poem had “shot” and reduced to “patient, stupid, sullen ghosts of men;”. Told almost certainly in Sassoon’s own, authentic, autobiographical voice, the poem showS the repercussions of the war on his psychology and imagination. This very hard hitting, inescapably personal approach in Sassoon’s poetry is apparent in his talk of the Germans, “that I shot / When for his death my brooding rage was hot”; a mission of vengenace that the voice finds ultimately unsatisfactory and even unexplainable. It is the dead Germans who, at the conclusion of the poem, can see why they were killed, not because of the voice’s explanations of his anger but “Because his face could make them understand.”
It is interesting however, THAT Rivers theorises that the fictionalized Sassoon of Regeneration may have recovered from war trauma so quickly because his poetry was a “therapeutic” way of him expressing his feelings, helping him to deal with his repressed memories, confused and conflicting emotions of sympathy and hatred and his horrifying nightmares. The reader can certainly see elements of this “therapeutic” benefit in a poem like “Enemies”.This tendency of Sassoon to use his own voice, which is often angry and satirical and yet frequently reveals, perhaps accidentally, the complexity of his own psychology and the war’s affects on it, is in contrast with the variety of individual character voices Barker very carefully ‘directs’ in her novel. GOOD POINT This is a major point of difference in narrative technique between the novel and the poetry: Sassoon’s voice may be complex, but it always remains recognisably Sassoon’s, whereas Barker’s voice is disguised behind the characters she creates or fictionalizes for the novel. She does this so effectively by using free indirect style, giving her the ability to gain many perspectives on different situations and issues surrounding the war. Also, and perhaps more importantly, her use of free indirect style means she can maintain the advantages of the third person narrative perspective while allowing the reader to distinguish the characters’ voices as she alters her style of writing to correspond with their individual personalities and backgrounds. This helps gain an intimacy with each character and develops a recognizable voice for the reader to identify.For example, when Sassoon first has a conversation with Rivers at “afternoon tea” for new arrivals we hear his perspective describing the light on the curtains in the room as a “glimmering arc”, the poetic voice used helps the reader know who is talking. This mirrors an image in Sassoon’s poem “The Death Bed” –“Blowing the curtain to a glimMering curve”- presenting Barker’s research into capturing a true to life voice for Sassoon.
We can see something similar happening in the voice she creates for character of Captain Rivers. For example, as he heads down a corridor at Craiglockhart the narrative voice notes that “Pipes lined the walls……gurgling from time to time like lengths of human intestine”; here, through the medical references used, the reader understands the description to be from Rivers’ viewpoint.Timothy Marshall, in his discussion of free indirect style in Mikhail Bakhtin’s work Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, comments that Dostoevsky’s novels contain many voices: “They are so because, in his view, language is constitutively intersubjective (therefore social) and logically precedes subjectivity. It is never neutral, unaddressed, exempt from the aspirations of others. In his word it is dialogic”. This perspective deals with the idea that free indirect style is not the reader overhearing the voice or thoughts of the characters, but that the author is allowing the reader to hear what he wants us to pick up from the character, in order to grasp a better understanding about the individual. This therefore creates for the reader a recognizable voice , and one which we are almost ‘tricked’ into believing is authentic because it is not the same as the author’s narrative voice. VERY GOOD DISCUSSION THIS, AND YOU HAVE ‘NAILED’ THE AO4 REQUIREMENT WITH IT AS WELL. Sassoon’s voice in the poem insists that it is authentic because the reader is likely to know Sassoon himself experienced what he writes about. In contrast, Barker’s voices seem authentic because they are different from each other, making them seem individual and the novel seem ‘polyphonic’ or ‘dialogic’ in structure. To help grasp a fuller understanding and gain a further insight into how Pat Barker uses free indirect style to help identify voices we can concentrate on one character, Billy Prior. Within Billy Prior’s own individual story, Pat Barker dives into his past and both his sociological and psychological rehabilitation within the novel. We are first introduced to Billy Prior as a mute Second-Lieutenant who can not communicate with anyone apart from through the use of a pen and pad. The way in which Pat Barker presents this is not necessarily his voice, but certainly his means of communication through the pad is always important, as Prior always writes in capital letters “I DONT REMEMBER”. NO NEED FOR THIS QUOTE REALLY IF YOU’RE JUST USING IT TO PROVE PRIOR WRITES IN CAPITALS. This when Prior is being asked what his nightmares are about as a way of Rivers helping his rehabilitation. So the introduction of Prior shows him as always being angry through the use of the capital letters on the pad, although Prior himself argues that capitals are simply ‘clearer’ and Rivers thinks he may be trying to disguise his handwriting so it can’t be analysed. Prior is seen as being very much a man not willing to share information about anything purely because he does not “REMEMBER”. Apart form this we at first are not able to gain any more information about Prior at this stage. Prior’s mutism has gone further in Regeneration as he wakes up “shouting” we begin to gain more detail about his true voice a distinctly “northern accent”. In a conversation with Rivers we see Prior’s resistance to talk about what he has gone through. “I don’t think talking helps. It just churns things up”: not that he does not want to be helped, he just finds it hard to confront his emotions. When Prior does begin to slightly open up he adopts a different voice, a satirical one aimed at higher ranked soldiers GOD POINT THIS, AND ONE WORTH EXPANDING ON. “The pride of the British army….”. This helps to show Prior’s anger towards the army and he goes on to describe how he was dugout in “no mans land” for “forty-eight hours” and had to stay there while he and his soldiers were bombarded with “one shell after the other”. Proir’s voice now has been able to develop and give the reader a more rounded look on him as a character and start to identify his voice by itself. The satirical voice also appears in confrontations with Rivers about his own stammer “luck for you, I mean…if your stammer was the same as theirs- you might actually have to sit down and work out” YOU NEED TO FINISH THIS QUOTE_ YOU DON’T WANT TO LEAVE IT HANGING LIKE THIS.
The confrontational voice with Rivers a person in Priors in seeming power REDRAFT THIS SENTENCE- DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE AT THE MOMENT can be compared with the satirical voices adopted in Sassoons poetry. For example in the poem “The General” with his seemingly cheery outlook “Good morning, good morning” is perceived to have no sympathy at all. He is seen to have smiled at soldiers even though he knows soon his order will have “most of ‘ em dead” These young boys however are inevitably going to die “by his plans of attack”. The satirical voice and epic voce Sassoon uses is very similar to the way Barker manpulates Priors own actions towards Rivers in some respects. AGAIN< THIS IS GOOD POINT I’D LIKE EXPANDED_ DEFINE ‘EPIC VOICE’ FOR STARTERS AND HOW SASSOON USES IT IN THE POEM, HOW IT’S DIFFERENT FROM THE LYRIC VOICE OF SOME OF HIS OTHER VERSE, SUCH AS LETTER TO ROBERT GRAVES.Through the relationship with Sarah Lumb we are able to gain another persons viewpoint on the situation of the war and the consequences of this on the people and also society. We are also able to draw both contrasting and comparative aspects with Sassoon’s poetry through the character of Sarah Lumb. Sarah Lumb is first introduced to us at a café in Edinburgh, her voice at first is very much representative of her character: a northern hard working women paid just “fifty bob a week”. This character may also not only be a love interest for Prior but in another way a tool for Barker to portray something she has a lot of knowledge of, as expressed through her other novels: a working-class woman’s own point of view on things. Sarah Lumb’s interaction with Prior develops through the novel and the narration even dips into her consciousness and voice on numerous occasions with the usage of free-indirect style. NICELY DONE THS PASSAGE- THINK ABOUTBARKER GIVING VOICE TO THE VOICELESS WITH SARAH, ESPECIALLY AS SASSON TENDS TO BE PATRONISING TOWRDS WOMEN AND GIVES LITTLE VALUE OR SYMPATHY TO THEM IN POEMS LIKE ‘THE GLORY OF WOMEN’- SOME NOTES ON THIS IN THE TEXT OF ED’S ESSAY.

The first instance of this is when Sarah and “Madge” go to visit Madge’s injured boyfriend in hospital. As Sarah walks around the hospital “corridors” she notices that “none of these men was badly wonded”. As she continues through the corridors she finds herself lost and then enters an area where she becomes very “aware of a silence…..by her entrance”. The free indirect style here by Barker is used to show Sarahs own voice and reaction to “a row of figures in wheelchairs”. These people hidden away with “trouserlegs sewn short: empty sleeves pinned to jackets” are also something Sassoon covers in two of his own poems “Glory of women” and to some extent in “Does it Matter”. USE QUOTATIONS TO SHOW THE CLOSENESS OF THE TWO PASSAGES- DOES ONE INSPIRE OR INFORM THE OTHER? Glory of Women almost seems based on Sarah Lumbs own character in the line “You make us shells” as within Regeneration Sarah’s actual JOB is that very thing.The final line in Sassoons very single minded satirical voice best describes the almost delusional invisionments NOT SURE WHAT YOU MEAN BY THIS- RE-WRITE IT. on some women and their thoughts of there men fighting in the war. “knitting socks to send your son, His face is being trodden deeper into the mud”. Sasssons very blunt point of view is one Barker challenges through the voice of Sarah Lumb. Sarah becomes very angry about the way these soldiers are hidden away and comes to the conclusions that “If the country demanded that price, then it should bloody be well prepared to look at the result”. Her own voice showing the anger that she feels for these men. One that almost mirrors Sassoons views in “Glory for Women” and his own personal ones he feels about the treAtment of injured soldiers and the war on a whole. This revelation in the book here helps to bring in a female opposition to the war and let them voice there opinions in a very male dominated novel. THIS DISCUSSION WORKS A TREAT- JUST CORRECT IT IN THE PLACES I’VE INDICATED
KYLE- VERY GOOD SO FAR, YOU NOW NEED TO GET THE POETRY HALF DONE, ALTHOUGH YOU’VE MADE A GOOD START TO IT HERE- YOU NEED ABOUT 800 MORE WORDS, AND REMEMBER, MAYBE 8 POEMS ALL TOLD- CERTAINLY NO FEWER THAN THAT. I’D DEFINE ‘EPIC VOICE’ NOW AND THEN LOOK AT THE POEMS THAT BALANCE BETWEEN EPIC AND LYRIC- LIKE THE DEATH BED, AND THEN GO ON TO THE LYRIC ONES, ESPECIALLY LETTERTO ROBERT GRAVES, AND HOW THEY SHOW SASSOON’S PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FACES IN THE SAME WAY THAT BARKER’S DIALOGUE SHOWS HER CHARACTER’S PUBLIC FACES AND HER USE OF F.I.S SHOWS THEIR PRIVATE FACES.

Y13: Edward Rance- your essay, marked. Shaping up nicely, just get the quotes in!


Edward Rance
The novel regeneration by Pat Barker is set in a World War 1 hospital in Craiglockhart, Scotland. Some of the patients featured in the novel are fictional characters and some are fictionalised historical characters, such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Barker is a female novelist of the 20th century who is best known for her novels about northern working class women, such as Union Street, so it is perhaps surprising for her to choose to explore the consequences of war on a group of men, who are mostly upper class as well. This makes it difficult for Barker to put a fresh approach on the Great War, however she does this using sophisticated literary techniques. NOT SURE OF YOUR MEANING- I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT BEING A LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY WOMAN AUTHOR RATHER THAN AN EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY MALE WRITER- LIKE SASSOON OR OWEN OR GRAVES- WOULD GIVE HER FRESH PERSEPECTIVE ON THE WAR, NOT A ‘STALE’ ! Siegried Sassoon, on the other hand, was an aristocrat who wrote war poetry. TRUE ENOUGH, BUT SASSOON’S EXPERIENCES AS A TRENCH OFFICER ARE FAR MORE RELEVANT TO HIS WRITING THAN HIS SOCIAL CLASS. Sassoon’s purposes for writing much of his poetry was to show the psychological consequences of war and to gain sympathy from the public for his fellow soldiers. I’D QUOTE THE RELEVANT PASSAGE OF THE DECLARATON HERE IF I WERE YOU. Barker’s purpose for writing Regeneration was to show a historical perspective of the Great War and how it affected society.
Regeneration is largely about the psychological and sociological aftermath of the Great War, with the only details of the bloody battles coming from the memories, dreams and flashbacks of the characters in the hospital. This allows the novel to be more about the consequences of battle, rather than a detailed description of trench combat itself. Because of this purpose in the novel, Barker uses a multiplicity of voices in free indirect style as her central narrative technique. This is to allow her to highlight not only the psychological aspects of the war but also the sociological aspects at the same time.

To get the social issues across, Barker must feature a number of characters where we can experience issues surrounding the war through their points of view. Free indirect style will often be used to present the thoughts of a character unannounced and their personality will sometimes invade the narrative space. YOU NEED TO GIVE SOME EXAMPLES OF THIS OTHERWISE YOU ARE ASSERTING WITH EVIDENCE, A SURE SIGN THAT YOU ARE REGURGITATING CLASS NOTES WITHOUT REALLY UNDERSTANDING THEM. Free indirect style is affected by the style of the characters and we can experience the action in their own language, for example Rivers’ medical speak and stammer. USE A QUOTATION, DAMMIT!

As well as wanting to express the views of a range of characters, at the same time Barker also wants intimacy with her characters to show the physiological YOU MEAN ‘PSYCHOLOGICAL’ aspects of the war. EXPAND THIS A BIT- SHOW HOW F.I.S ALLOWS FOR GREATER PSYCHOLOGICAL TRANSPARANCY.
Regeneration has a historical perspective on the war, as it was written in 1992. This contrasts to the poetry of Sassoon, which was written contemporaneously with the war. Sassoon’s poetry is not only written to show personal experiences through the war but also as a “political protest.” As well as this, unintentionally, writing poetry helped Sassoon. It was described by Captain WHR Rivers CAREFUL- RIVERS HIMSELF, THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE THOUGH THIS. BARKER’S VERSION OF RIVERS CERTAINLY DID- THAT ISN’T THE SAME THING as being “therapeutic” for him as it helped him get through the trauma of the war. The poems of Sassoon are obviously a great deal briefer than the novel and this allows for a more emotionally powerful text, with more direct, less exploratory narrative voice. The novel, in contrast has more scope, and multiple characters have to be developed and this novel in particular is nuanced, as it expresses many viewpoints in many voices. GOOD PASAGE
Perhaps we can look at the idea of the multiplicity of voices in Regeneration on three different levels: the varieties of narrative voices themselves, of characters as an index to their social position and the voice of the characters as revealing of them psychologically.
There are multiple narrative voices within the novel as it is important for Barker to let her characters speak for themselves, rather than to mediate them to the reader through a more personal or less neutral third person narrative. These are the narrative voice, the voices of characters socially and the voice of the characters psychologically. NOT SURE WHAT THIS SENTENCE IS DOING HERE- DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE TO ME. There are multiple narrative voices within the novel as it is important for Barker not to include her own voice because of the male characters. EXPAND THIS- WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ‘BECAUSE OF THE MALE CHARACTERS’. However, Barker’s voice is not completely absent from the text. The character of Prior has many similarities to Barker in the fact that they are both from a working class background. Prior is also an invented character in the novel so Barker is clearly not trying to make her voice absent from the text. Also, Barker tends to give the characters who she is more in sympathy with space in the narrative, while characters like Langdon, who considers neurasthenic patients as “…cowards, shirkers, scrimshankers and degenerates..” are not allowed to present their own viewpoints at all as they are not given passages of free indirect style.

This is in contrast such poem by Sassoon as “The General”, which does give us the viewpoints of the generals but these views are not explained to us. EXPAND THIS AND USE QUOTATIONS- NOT SURE WHAT YOUR POINT IS.

Barker has chosen the technique of free indirect style as it allows her to present her characters in many different ways. She wants the reader to understand both the social and psychological consequences of the war and free indirect style allows her to do this. YOU HAVE SAID MUCH OF THIS ALREADY. This technique is used especially with the character of Rivers: for example, it is clearly Rivers’ perspective that notes in Sassoon’s speech a stammer, but “…not the recent, self conscious stammer of a neurasthenic”. Without free indirect style it would become difficult for Barker to show Rivers’ real feelings. However it is not just personal feelings that Barker can illustrate using free indirect style. Rivers’ subconscious life is also shown. “Rivers became aware that he was gripping the edge of the parapet and consciously relaxed his hands.” This is also the first time it is made clear to the reader that Rivers may be suffering from war neurosis, as he himself has been traumatised by all the horrific stories he has heard. Rivers also has a stammer but we are told that he has had that since he was young, however another example that Rivers is suffering from mild symptoms of war neurosis is when his stammer gets progressively worse during a conversation with Prior. Here, Rivers has been affected by Prior’s graphically detailed story leading to his stammer to get worse.

In both episodes, Barker uses Rivers’ psychological awareness to present ideas about his own developing psychological trauma to the reader: a very subtle way of getting difficult ideas across to the reader that would otherwise be awkward to express without disrupting the flow of the narrative.
Barker uses phonetic misspelling and dialect words to draw her characters through the way they talk, for example Rivers’ medical speak and Prior’s strong Manchester accent, which Rivers shows a certain snobbery to. QUOTATION IN SUPPORT OF THIS PLEASE Barker also uses many examples of silence to indicate traumatised patients. This is evident in the character of Prior who is suffering from mutism. Prior writes down everything on paper in block capitals which when read give the impression that he is shouting. There are also many occasions in which there are either ‘pauses’ or ‘silences’. This is in contrast to “Great Men”, a poem by Siegfried Sassoon. This particular poem is short and very easy to read. When read, this poem also comes across as very pacey and punchy. QUOTATIONS AND ANALYSIS IN SUPPORT, PLEASE. One of Sassoon’s friends who at Craiglockhart was fellow poet Wilfred Owen who once described much of Sassoon’s poetry AS like “Trench Rockets”. EXPAND THIS- WHAT DIS OWEN MEAN BY THIS DESCRIPTION? “Great Men” is an ironic poem as he likens the Generals in charge of the war as being the “great ones of the earth”. This poem also has an angry voice throughout. In the final few lines of the poem it ends very abruptly with the view that the Generals should tell the dead of their great sacrifice for a good cause in the cemeteries where they are buried.
Free indirect style is the central narrative technique used in the novel Regeneration, however this method is also present in some of the poetry by Siegfried Sassoon. “The Death Bed” for example features free indirect style. The poem features the thoughts of a war veteran and his dreams where things in the present moment trigger war memories; these however are pleasant memories unlike those of Prior in the novel Regeneration. In the third stanza of the poem there is the line, “Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve”. This very same line is used in the novel Regeneration on page 11 to describe the net curtain behind Rivers. “The Death Bed” features someone gradually dying and although the dreams of the war veteran started of pleasantly, in the fifth stanza the pain arrives “like a prowling beast”. Death here is also personified, as it is at this point the veteran is close to it. The overall tone of this poem is a sympathetic one to the soldiers involved with the war. Sassoon’s anger of the war comes through in the sixth stanza. “…how should he die / When cruel old campaigners win safe through?” The ending of the poem is a sombre and depressing conclusion. Here Sassoon comments that whilst this particular war veteran may have died, there are still more soldiers dying this very minute. Another example of multiple voices and free indirect style in Sassoon’ s poetry is in the “General”. It is a very short poem, only seven lines, but it features three different voices. These are Sassoon’s voice, the general’s voice and Harry’s voice. Despite it being a very short poem a lot can be discovered from it. Sassoon’s viewpoint comes across in the line, “Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ‘em dead”. This is a typical viewpoint by Sassoon as he was opposed to fighting in the war; he also has said similar trivial lines in other poems, including the “Death Bed” and “Does it Matter?” The fictional characters of Harry and Jack are fooled by the General’s cheeriness, as we then learn that they are now both dead. Once again, it is a very abrupt ending to a Sassoon poem, and this poem in particular features a lot of colloquial language. This poem overall, is contrasted between the generals cheerfulness and him then sending men to fight and die.
The poem “Does it Matter?” also features colloquial language, used ironically to present a serious subject. The opening line of the poem is a rhetorical question, “Does it matter? – Losing your legs?” This is a very trivial way to open a poem, especially as it is about the serious issue of losing your legs. There is a very jolly and happy tone coming across in this poem but also a patronising tone as well. The second stanza begins with another rhetorical question similar to the opening line, “Does it matter? – Losing your sight?” This can be read as a patronising question as the following line is “There’s such splendid work for the blind”. In this poem similar ideas come across in “Disabled”, a poem by Sassoon’s fellow patient and poet at Craiglockhart, Wilfred Owen. The poem is rhythmical and each line is separate and makes sense on its own. There is a very simple rhyming scheme as well, that simply goes A, B, B, C, and A in the opening stanza. The poem is heavy with punctuation also; something that lacks in some of Sassoon’s other work. WHAT’S THE EFFECT OF THIS HEAVY PUNCTUATION SCHEME? The overall style of this poem is ironic, because the question is asked by Sassoon, “Does it matter?” Sassoon makes out in this poem that it doesn’t matter, as he ridicules serious situations, however the irony is that it does matter. THIS IS POORLY EXPRESSED AND NEEDS RE-WRITING. This poem was written in 1917 at the war hospital of Craiglockhart and this too is written in free indirect style because not only does it feature Sassoon’s voice but also the voices and opinions of other people. WHY DOES THAT MEAN IT HAS TO BE WRITTEN IN FREE VERSE? IT DOESN’T, BUT YOUR SENTENCE HERE IMPLIES THAT IT DOES.“Glory of Women”, by Siegfried Sassoon is in contrast to the previous poems I looked at. This is a very angry poem, and is not just about war as it shows anger towards women as well. The style of the poem is monologic.COMPARE THIS WITH THE DIALOGIC OR POLYPHONIC STRUCTURE OF THE NOVEL, OR OF SOME OF SASSOON’S OTHER POEMS. The opening two lines of the poem are very patronising, prejudiceD and angry. “You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave, / or wounded in a mentionable place”. There is only one reference to the novel, Regeneration.NOT SURE OF WHAT YU MEAN- REFERENCE TO THE NOVEL BY WHOM? NOT BY SASSOON- HE DIED THIRTY YEARS BEFORE IT WAS WRITTEN! This is when Sassoon describes the women making shells to help the war effort. In the novel, the character of Sarah Lumb also does this. SO WHAT? IS BARKER USING HER NOVEL TO GIVE A VOICE TO THE WOMEN SASSOON DOES NOT GIVE VOICE TO? PART OF HER MULTIPLE-NARRATOR, POLYPHIONIC STRUCTURE In the final few lines of the poem Sassoon describes how it is not only the English that are suffering, it is the Germans as well, despite them being our opposition. During the Great War, this would have been a controversial thing to have said, but Sassoon does have links to Germany as his mother was German, NO SHE WASN’T- SHE JUST LIKE GERMAN OPERA! hence his foreign sounding name. NO SUGGESTION OF SASSOON HAVING GERMAN SYMPATHIES- IN FACT, HE ADMITTED (BARKER WRITES A SCENE BASED ON HIS ADMISSION) TO HATING GERMANS AND GOING OUT ON NIGHT PATROL SPECIFICALLY TO KILL AS MANY AS HE COULD, ALTHOUGH SUCH ACTION HAD NO STRATEGIC VALUE, IN REVENGE FOR THE DEATH OF HIS BELOVED BROTHER The overall idea of this poem is all about women turning away from mutilation and the real horrors of the war. This can be compared to the part in the novel in which Sarah Lumb visits Craiglockhart hospital. She is uncomfortable to be in the hospital, but this was because she felt disgusted that all this men were put into a secret and ‘hidden’ ward. AGAIN, USE QUOTATIONS AND CONCENTRATE ON THE WAY BARKER GIVES A VOICE TO THE FEMALE CHARCTERS OR FEMALE PERSPECTIVE SASSON’S POETRY LEAVES VOICELESS.
“Counter Attack” is more of an epic poem by Sassoon. It features some very graphic details of death, and parts of the poem are in free indirect style whilst some are not. The second stanza is not in free indirect style, but the following stanza is. EFFECT OF THIS? There are several voices in this part, Sassoon’s, a soldier and another soldier who ‘remembers his rifle’. The next 6 – 8 lines are written in the 3rd person, but the last line of the poem is a neutral line and is back to the voice of the poet again. The last line simply reads, “The counter – attack had failed”, a sombre ending to the poem. Overall this is a very detailed account of a failed counter attack which includes some graphic images of death and fear that can be compared to the detail of Prior’s hypnosis experience, however the only difference is that Barker used Prior’s hypnosis scene from research whereas Sassoon used his from memory.The two poems by Sassoon, “Repression of War Experience” and “Letter to Robert Graves” are both very similar in how they can be compared and contrasted to parts of the novel Regeneration. “Letter to Robert Graves” is a particular lengthy poem, it has a political stance which are normally easy to understand but this is difficult and complicated as it features invented words. The poem is in the form of a letter to make it more authentic and personal. NOT REALLY TO MAKE IT MORE PERSONAL- SASSOON NEVER WANTED IT PUBLISHED, IT IS GENUINE LYRIC POEM EXPRESSING PRIVATE THOUGHTS TO A TRUSTED FRIEND RATHER THAN BEING A POEM FOR ‘PUBLIC CONSUMPTION’ In the third stanza of the poem, it is almost in a stream of consciousness and toward the end of the poem Sassoon explains how he can’t write or appreciate happy poetry any more, “All crammed with village verses about Daffodils and Geese - …O Jesu make it cease…” This is a particular important poem as Robert Graves is a character from the novel. THIS SENTENCE MAKES NO SENSE- GRAVES WAS A REAL FRIEND OF SASSOON’S, AND BARKER FICTIONALIZES HIM JUST AS SHE FICTIONALIZES SASSOON This was a very personal poem, as Sassoon never wanted it to be published whilst he was still alive, most of his poetry is public but this is private. WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES THIS MAKE TO THE NARRATIVE VOICE OF THE POEM?

“Repression of War Experience”, too features a part of the novel Regeneration. DOESN’T- YOU JUST MEANIT CAN BE COMPARED TO AN ASPECT OF THE NOVEL This poem enacts the thoughts of Sassoon using free verse. There are parts of this poem that are very similar to Burns’ scene in the woods in the novel. It is possibly likely that Barker took her idea for Burn’s session in the woods from the poetry of Sassoon. GOOD- EXEMPLIFY, USE QUOTATIONS!
Overall, a lot of Barkers influence from writing her novel may have came from the poetry of Sassoon. Some of the ideas in the poems, “Disabled”, “Repression of war experience” and “Glory of women” can be linked to certain parts of the novel. It is also clear that Barker shares Sassoon’s approach to include free indirect style as a narrative technique. Several of Sassoon’s poetry includes passages of free indirect style, although in this case it is likely that Barker chose to use free indirect style for Regeneration as her narrative technique as she thought that it would work best, its just coincidental that Sassoon uses the same technique in some of his poetry.

ED- YOU NEED TO MAKE THE CHANGES INDICATED AND ADD A MORE SATISFYING CONCLUSION. MOST IMPORTANTLY, YOU MUST SUPPORT YOUR ASSERTIONS WITH QUOTATIONS AND ANALYSIS- A GOOD ESSAY SHOULD BE ABOUT ONE THIRD SAYING CLEVER THINGS ABOUT THE TEXTS, TWO THIRDS SUPPORTING THESE CLEVER THINGS BY USING QUOTATIONS AND ANALYSIS. LOTS TO LIKE HERE THOUGH AND DEFINITELY ON THE RIGHT LINES.