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pranavroh 's review for:
Regeneration
by Pat Barker
The First World War exposed the human psyche to the horrors of a mobilised, armed conflict for the very first time. It pitted Victorian ideals of courage, honour, manliness and patriotism against the grim reality of trench warfare - where these ideal were found more often than not to be lacking.
A common phenomenon of the Great war was the shell shocked soldier. Also dubbed war neurosis this phenomenon is better known today as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It entailed the gradual psychic breakdown of a soldier exposed to the dehumanising effect of the trenches at Flanders, Ypres and Arras. On a daily basis, living in conditions too horrendous to imagine, seeing their comrades die around them , with the spectre of death hanging over their head, Soldiers were made to face a harsh truth - there is no glory in war, it is a bloody, dehumanising and pointless ritual.
Without going into the implications of this realisation on the part of the ordinary soldier (which were far reaching) Regeneration by Pat Barker aims to address the issue of shell shock - and its social implications.
This premise is wonderfuly intriguing. While there are several books on the horrors of the 2nd world war, the humanistic perspective of the first is rarely given much weight. It inspired a lot of debates regarding the futility of war, inspired Sassoon, owen and other war poets and enabled fgreat leaps in the field of psychiatry. Pat Barker uses a large cast of characters, mostly real, some imagined in a fictionalised account of the psychic burden of World war one and turns what could have been, in my opinion, a deeply affecting and riveting account into an insipid and tasteless documentary.
I am sure there will be several people who like this book and many more who might tell me that this is just the first of a trilogy and I need to be patient but there was nothing in the book that moved me to read more. There was a toatl lack of dramatic orchestration of any kind, a lack of conflict and no resolution whatsoever at the end of the book. No characters made any journey, they werent changed by any of the events and most of them seemed to be cut from a standard template. IT was frustrating as the language, and dialogue were brilliant. NBarker is obviously a great author but the disconnect I felt with the characters has prevented me from seeking out the rest of the trilogy. Perhaps some other time.
A common phenomenon of the Great war was the shell shocked soldier. Also dubbed war neurosis this phenomenon is better known today as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It entailed the gradual psychic breakdown of a soldier exposed to the dehumanising effect of the trenches at Flanders, Ypres and Arras. On a daily basis, living in conditions too horrendous to imagine, seeing their comrades die around them , with the spectre of death hanging over their head, Soldiers were made to face a harsh truth - there is no glory in war, it is a bloody, dehumanising and pointless ritual.
Without going into the implications of this realisation on the part of the ordinary soldier (which were far reaching) Regeneration by Pat Barker aims to address the issue of shell shock - and its social implications.
This premise is wonderfuly intriguing. While there are several books on the horrors of the 2nd world war, the humanistic perspective of the first is rarely given much weight. It inspired a lot of debates regarding the futility of war, inspired Sassoon, owen and other war poets and enabled fgreat leaps in the field of psychiatry. Pat Barker uses a large cast of characters, mostly real, some imagined in a fictionalised account of the psychic burden of World war one and turns what could have been, in my opinion, a deeply affecting and riveting account into an insipid and tasteless documentary.
I am sure there will be several people who like this book and many more who might tell me that this is just the first of a trilogy and I need to be patient but there was nothing in the book that moved me to read more. There was a toatl lack of dramatic orchestration of any kind, a lack of conflict and no resolution whatsoever at the end of the book. No characters made any journey, they werent changed by any of the events and most of them seemed to be cut from a standard template. IT was frustrating as the language, and dialogue were brilliant. NBarker is obviously a great author but the disconnect I felt with the characters has prevented me from seeking out the rest of the trilogy. Perhaps some other time.