Madness in Regeneration

AS Coursework

Madness

Madness is a key idea in Regeneration. Madness is exhibited through symptoms such as mutism, fear of blood, and Sassoon's angry anti-war declaration. Because such behaviour is deemed unacceptable Sassoon is given the label "shell-shocked" to discredit his views. For many of the characters in Regeneration attempting to treat their symptoms only serves to make them worse. Rivers eventually questions whether it is "mad" for these soldiers to have broken down in war or to blindly follow the orders which they are given. Rivers also questions whether it is right to treat this "madness" only to send soldiers back to the war which made them mad in the first place.

Rivers

Rivers begins to question the very nature of madness; as a character, he grows into a new type of person, one who challenges the assumptions of his society. He begins to wonder whether it truly was madness for these men to break down in the face of such horror and death, or whether it was madness that so many men (including Rivers himself) blindly followed a program of war and decimation in the first place. Rivers begins to wonder if he himself is mad for "healing" patients only to send them back to war to be killed. The novel provides no easy answer, but instead provokes further thought about the question of madness and the nature of sanity.

What has caused the mental health issues for each patient at Craiglockhart?

Patient Cause of mental health issue

Symptoms of mental health issue

Attempted treatments at Craiglockhart

Billy Prior

David Burns

Wilfred Owen

Anderson

Willard

Callan

Example….

Name:David Burns

Cause of mental health Issue:P19 – landed head-first in the exploding stomach of a dead, rotting German corpse.

Symptoms of mental Health issue:Weight loss – can’t eat – page 18Nightmares – page 19 Vomiting – page 19Anxiety / trembling page 37

Attempted Treatments:Think about and talk about the event – page 18

Rivers attitude towards his patients’ conditions“Certainly the rigorous repression of emotion and desire had been the constant theme of his adult life. In advising his young patients to abandon the attempt at repression and to let themselves feel the pity and terror their war experience inevitably evoked, he was excavating the ground he stood on.”Page 48What is River’s preferred form of therapy for addressing his patients’ shell-shock?

Find examples in the novel of the following

Evidence in the novel of “talk therapy” being effective

Evidence of patients resisting “talk therapy”

HomeworkDue in: Thursday 26th September

Answer the following questions as fully as you can:

1. What is “shell-shock” and to what extent was this condition understood during World War One?

2. Why is Siegfried Sassoon classed as having “shell-shock”?3. What is River’s preferred form of treatment for shell-shock? Give

examples of how he applies this to characters in the novel and to what extent it is successful?

4. What is the alternative treatment of shell-shock shown in “Regeneration” through the character of Yealland? How is this presented?

This homework combines independent research and your critical response to the novel. You can use the documentary (link on PPT), notes from the lesson and the hand out as some of your research resources. However, I expect you to do some independent research too. In questions 2, 3 and 4 – close reference to the novel is essential.