Preview

Dr. Rivers's Regeneration

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
272 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Dr. Rivers's Regeneration
In the novel "Regeneration", the psychological effects of World War I imposes a huge dilemma among psychiatrist Dr. Rivers; regarding his patients. He realizes it is his

duty to give proper care to his patients, hopefully resulting in sending them back to war. Unfortunately, throughout the novel he begins to question whether or not healing his patients only to send them back to war and possibly be killed is the right thing to do.He struggles to come to a conclusion about the assumptions society holds concerning madness, and begins to wonder whether or not he himself may be mad.

This novel focuses on several war-patients who are sent to a mental facility - Craiglockhart War Hospital, where they are treated for a variety of symptoms that may

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    division of soldiers as they contract with death of fellow soldiers, depression and battling with the war…

    • 464 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    No More Heroes Analysis

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In No More Heroes, a study of madness and psychiatry in war, Richard Gabriel points out that contrary to what is in the movies, television, and the military, it is not only the weak and cowardly who break down in battle. In truth, everyone is subject to breaking down in war, “perhaps most telling, not only are there no personalities or demographic factors which are associated with psychiatric collapse; neither are there any factors associated with heroism. It’s impossible to predict which soldiers will collapse and which will behave bravely”. He also adds, “There is no statistical difference in the rates of psychiatric breakdown among inexperienced troops and battle-hardened veterans.” When all is said and done, all ‘normal’ men are at risk in war.…

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    If I Die In A Combat Zone

    • 1332 Words
    • 6 Pages

    O’Brien demonstrates both the physical and mental effects the Vietnam war had on its soldiers through…

    • 1332 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Slaughter house 5

    • 1144 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Witnessing a traumatic event can be devastating, and the impact of that experience can result in the destruction of one’s peace of mind. Billy’s intense experiences throughout the war have a profound effect on his mental state. After escaping the fire bombing of Dresden, Billy experiences several signs of post-traumatic stress disorder including erratic sleep patterns and irrepressible sobbing. Because of his extreme anxiety, he checks himself into a mental hospital for veterans in the hopes of calming his mind and helping himself return to normalcy. Inside the hospital, the horrifying effects of war on one’s mental state is obvious, and it is very…

    • 1144 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The idea of madness is central in the novel Regeneration, and since the very beginning is presented as a struggle between the 'real' madness and the social conventions that lead people to think what should or should not be considered madness. The text is introduced with a letter written by one of the main characters, Siegfried Sassoon, who is going to be sent to a mental hospital for protesting against the war. But after reading the letter which is supposed to prove Sasoon's mental illness, the doctor in charge of the case, W.H.R. Rivers, starts doubting about if it is real illness or not. In fact, in the conversation he has with one of his colleagues after reading the letter, we can read the sentence ''Does it matter what his mental state is?''. So, although later on we find out that Sasoon has terrible nightmares and hallucinations, the reason why he is sent to hospital is purely social, he is sent there because he complains about what is socially acceptable, which in this war-time was going to the front to fight for your country. Actually, in a way, the reader is told right in the first chapter that Sasoon is not insane, when the author uses an external analepsis to narrate the conversation he had with his friend before knowing that he was going to be sent to Craiglockhart. In this conversation is clearly stated that he does what he does to be consistent with his ideas, even if he have had some hallucinations or nightmares because of traumas related to war (fact that is presented as something totally understandable and as something that would not affect his mental health until the point of being considered as insane, just as something that the authorities would use against him to put him in a mental hospital instead of a regular prison, and this way avoid the pacifist propaganda). So here a new question arises: is truth a universal reality? And even more important, if it is so, can we know it by heart or will we just…

    • 564 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Combat High

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This essay is based on Combat High written by Sebastian Junger first published in Newsweek Magazine in 2010. The article was adapted from the author 's book War which describes life in a platoon in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. He spent fourteen months during 2007 and 2008 embedded in the platoon. Junger points out the costs of the war in terms of the soldiers psychological aspects, explaining how being in combat can be damaging. Another cost of war is caused by lack of proper medical and psychological care to returning soldiers to help in the re-insertion to society.…

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers experience during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and mind, to the point where a few men return home completely destroyed. Many soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. Furthermore, an indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet they each individually harboured a desire to die and bring a conclusion to their misery. Over all, this story allows us to observe changes within the mentalities of army officers.…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the novel ‘regeneration,’ Rivers and Yealland are characters who differ significantly in terms of their methods of treatment, relationships with their staff and patients. Barker defines and illustrates the dramatic difference between how each doctor treats their patients, Barker emphasises on Rivers compassion and consideration for his patients. Yealland on the other hand expresses no empathy or concern for his patients which symbolises his self-indulged persona.…

    • 389 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Our soldiers leave wars in foreign countries only to fight another war at home. David Finkel explores the hidden pain and suffering of war-families and veterans in his book Thank You For Your Service. Finkel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of a New York Times Best Book of the Year, has spent hours upon hours researching, interviewing, and simply documenting what a two-decade war does to a soldier and their family. With no specific target audience, it is at least suggested those unfamiliar with PTSD and TBI should spend some times diving into the heart-breaking and up-lifting stories. Finkel uses stories and their meanings to appeal to the emotions of the readers to support his idea of the hidden pain and suffering of our veterans and…

    • 1760 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    War evokes many different emotions for some soldiers. Some are drafted and demanded to serve, others volunteer their lives for the sake of not being titled as cowards. Some get to fight another day, some don't, others get captured and become prisoners or hostages. But one thing is certain, for those who have experienced war know first hand that it has the power to change you as a person. In the short stories “Guests of the Nation“ and “The Things They Carried,” authors Frank O’Connor and Tim O’Brien share the same central idea of the horrible effects of war. Both stories are about a young male soldier who faces the true reality of war as well as the emotional and impacts these experiences leave with them. Though the…

    • 1040 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    With little in the way of power, the men in power knew the army could not win or even stand a fighter’s chance without more tried a far subtler and ingenious way and tactic for calling on the masses for ‘their’ war. Using a carefully planned campaign of propaganda (most famous of which was the ‘your country needs you’) with this the men flocked to the recruiting stands unbeknownst to them the horrors that waited on the other side of the channel. For some this was a godsend to go from the squalor they knew to the life of a hero they had been promised with 3 meals a day. ‘At the start of the 20th century, malnutrition was widespread. Although the importance of clean water and good drainage was recognized, little was known about the dangers of a bad diet. During the First World War it was found that almost half the men called up to enlist were not in good enough health to serve. Efforts were made in the 1930s to improve the situation and the nation's health became a government priority.’ (Eating In 1900-1950) this fact shocked Britain and its opinion on how it would treat or continue to treat these men upon their return from the fields of red. There was little evidence to the opinions in Britain at the time on mental health prior to the war as people had little concept as to the meanings and uses of science of emotion due to it’s at the time near mythical standing, unlike physical medicine that could be seen and treated, problems of the brain were harder to diagnose and more of a problem of the upper classes. Such an illness in a family could bring much shame and social stigma, where as in the lower classes, mental illness is less documented but more visible in the works of predominant writers where suicide along with many other forms of mental illness are seen but used as a crutch to portray how hard the lower classes have the simple…

    • 1766 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The trauma that they have endured is not handled appropriately and the facilities which they need are often not mentioned to them, this leads to problems developing such as; committing suicide and violent crimes, and suffering homelessness, addiction, and mental illness in record numbers. On January 13, the New York Times published the first part in a series of examinations into killings committed in the United States by returned veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Under the title “War Torn,” the series examines 121 cases in which Iraq and Afghanistan veterans had committed or were charged with killings, most of them murder, and many linked to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and consequent substance abuse and domestic distress. Families or single veterans are left to contend with the mental damage themselves. Overwhelmingly from lower-income working class backgrounds, military families bear multiple burdens in caring for wounded loved ones: psychological difficulties, alienation and lack of social infrastructure, enormous, medical costs, and lost economic livelihoods. With our general economic situation in poor standing – job prospects being impossible to attain, and the cost of living rising – all the difficulties manifest and compound into huge burdens for these veterans. Consequently, domestic disturbances, self-medication and drug dependency, homelessness, and incarceration are becoming more and more…

    • 1110 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Wounded Veterans

    • 1614 Words
    • 7 Pages

    As of December 2009, over 3.3 million American troops have been sent overseas into Iraq and Afghanistan alone; 793,000 of them have been deployed more than once. (Tan, 2009) Sadly, not all of our troops return home alive and many that do face many challenges ahead. Physical wounds surly do not go unnoticed. They are fairly common in war time situations and are even shown in war movies. They show the viewer a sense of what a soldier goes through when injured and what to expect; but what about the mental wounds? The United States sends thousands of military men and women overseas into battle, returning them home with not only physical wounds but mental wounds as well.…

    • 1614 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the Vietnam War the reality of warfare brought many soldiers back to a home that didn't want them. Their feelings torn by atrocities, the loss of friends, and the condition of loneliness only made the experience worse. Did the issues on the home front affect the issues on the frontline? The novel Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers is a perfect example of the conflict and diversity among other soldiers during the Vietnam War. It shows the reality many soldiers faced and how they dealt with conflicts back home while they were alone and afraid of death creeping up on them. With the reality of war taking its toll, soldiers coming home to a world they didn't know, a world that had changed and left them in Vietnam to fend for themselves. They slept with wives who didn't know even the smallest of their problems. From nightmares to remembering bad memories, Vietnam veterans suffered it all from extreme depression to the worst, suicide. The real world didn't know how to deal with them and just left them alone.…

    • 843 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mental illness is one of the puzzles that has remained unraveled to many people. For those who wonder why mental illness is such a huge issue, people are affected by it in our daily to day lives. An example that is given concerns the soldiers who, after devastating experiences in the war fronts are unable to be integrated into the society. The soldiers experience bombings and see death, and therefore they become mentally ill. Results of mental illness range from divorce, domestic violence, drug use and other antisocial behaviors. Trying to find meaning to mental, the reading that is provided has sought to define what mental illness is and what it entails. Provided also in the paper are the two models, the medical model and the sociological…

    • 1563 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays