How does Barker explore the impact of war in this extract from "Regeneration"-extract p.10 Light from..neurasthenic

Alongside this, Pat Barker had also explored the impact of war by conveying the class system it created in society. An example of this is “purple shadows”, where “purple” with its royal, noble associations, connotes war as bringing pride to the soldiers, transcending their status to the upper classes in society. Furthermore, from “slightly averted…for arrogance” and “hands doing complicated things”, since Sassoon was an officer, readers can interpret this as war segregating men by their roles in the army, whereby regular soldiers weren’t deemed capable of doing “complicated things”, hence resulting in insecurity at their low status and contempt from officers. Evidently, Barker had conveyed this insensitive stereotype of regular soldiers to intentionally provoke resentment from readers at this unjust class system during wartime. Despite that, as Dr. Rivers was “more inclined to suspect” Sassoon of “shyness” instead of “arrogance”, this emphasizes that Sassoon goes against the stereotype of officers. In this circumstance, as officers were considered to have “fragile nerves, therefore more easily to be diagnosed with shellshock”, by not associating Sassoon to regular mannerisms of officers, Barker had portrayed that Sassoon is sane, therefore indicating that his Declaration should be taken seriously as it consists of the truth. In addition, besides arrogance, “head slightly averted” denotes that Sassoon is avoiding eye contact with Rivers; which as many say “Eyes are the windows to the soul”, it suggests that Sassoon and other soldiers didn’t want people to see their fear since this would ruin their “masculine” impression, as according to the line “war that shattered their pride” from Sassoon’s poem, Survivors.

Besides these points, Barker had also conveyed the impact of war as leading men to be insane and mentally unstable. For instance, as shown in “ a disguised stammer”…”recent, self-conscious stammer”…”life-long stammer”,  since stammering was regarded as one of the “conversion disorders” of shellshock, therefore, stammering can implicitly refer to one’s psychological breakdown and insanity. In this excerpt, as the Medical Board believed Sassoon had the “recent, self-conscious stammer” of the neurasthenic, whereas Rivers believed it was a “life-long stammer”, Barker had conveyed the underlying theme of the novel-“How can we differentiate the sane from the insane when everyone can be insane and “disguise” their stammer?. Alternatively, since stammering denotes the inability to convey one’s thoughts effectively, hence stammering can also be a metaphor for Sassoon’s thoughts or animosity towards war. In this case, the stammering was initially “disguised”, hence his dislike for war was imperceptible when he was still an officer. However, as time progressed, Sassoon and other soldiers became “conscious” of this antipathy, and thus wrote the Declaration, soon realizing that it’s “life-long”.  Most importantly, through “life-long”, Barker had accentuated that the mental impact of war is inexorable, as the atrocities of war will be engraved in the soldier’s minds for the rest of their lives.

Last but not least, Barker had explored the impact of war by expressing the dominance of the superego in soldiers. As portrayed in “sometimes hesitant, sometimes rushed”, this can refer to Freud’s idea of the id, and the superego in an individual; wherein the “hesitant” implies the superego and soldier’s reluctance to express their viewpoints of war in fear of the consequences, in contrast to “sometimes rushed”, suggesting the desire to convey their full emotions and no longer repress the id. Furthermore, the whole sentence “no twitches…no repeated ducking” and “his hands….perfectly steady” consists of a list-like structure, inferring a methodological approach to neurasthenia. More specifically, this can be a metaphor for the disciplined character of soldiers and the dominance of their superego as a result of their training with draconian officers. In this case, likewise to a methodological approach, the soldiers weren’t allowed to let emotions influence their decisions, thus accentuates how some headquarters have become callous due their desire of winning the war, as well as the repression of the id, whereby Freud believes was the main cause to nightmares and hallucinations.

In summary, Barker had explored the impacts of war in a myriad of ways, including the weak physical condition of soldiers, the class system in wartime society, the soldier’s insanity and the dominance of their superego. Nonetheless, the most important aspect of this excerpt was her exploration of the theme “How can we differentiate between the sane and insane”, whereby she used Sassoon as an example of the blur lines between these two elements.