Random thoughts with Regeneration and The Sun Also Rises

Reading Regeneration by Pat Barker after Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises brings a lot of epiphanies (that word looks a little funny) when I was reading it. The novel takes place in a medical hospital for mental problems in soldiers, which is interesting because I think I learnt more about the war in this setting outside of the war than I would have reading something with a bunch of battles and gunfights. More than that, Barker's novel allowed me to understand a bit more the characters within Hemingway's novel. I have to admit, sometimes I didn't quite understand what some of the characters were talking about, but now I feel that I understand them all a bit better- and not only the ex-soldiers involved in the war, but the women as well.

Here are some quotes and ideas from Regeneration that really made me connect to The Sun Also Rises. Feel free to read some of them, all of them, or none of them.

Mindset of the soldiers in war:

"He was feeling distinctly cheerful. Exactly the same feeling he had had on boardship going to France, watching England slide away into the mist. No doubts, no scruples, no agonizing, just a straightforward, headlong retreat towards the front" (Barker, 248).

• So there is this clear connection about having a clear goal, much like Jake likes to have, where there are no doubts. Here the character, Sassoon, likes war because he knows his purpose and who he is. Jake, on the other hand, misses the war because he is lost without it.
• But what I found particularly interesting is that Sassoon says, "retreat towards the front". It's almost as if he isn't going somewhere, but running away from something. One of the ideas in this novel is that people weren't fighting the war because they wanted to kill, but because they felt a duty to their country and/or their comrades who were also fighting. The soldiers were unsure about a lot of things, but pretty much everyone still believed that the war was worth fighting- they just weren't sure why. Pacifists are looked down upon by everyone. I think here, Sassoon "retreats" from his normal life- he's running away from all his problems, and going to something that was clear, where he didn't have to think too much. Perhaps Jake is lost because he can't run away from his problems? In the war there was a strict structure they had to follow. In the world Jake currently lives in, it seems a bit chaotic. Anyways, I think the word "retreat" gives a lot of insight into the mindset of some soldiers.

Attitude of soldiers away from war and their relationship with non-soldiers

Sassoon also says some other things which might give some understanding to Jake:

• Talking with Rivers, the doctor, we discover that Sasson has cut himself off from the army, "the only place I've [Sassoon] ever really belonged" (36).
• This has led him to isolation. Sassoon "can't talk to anybody" (36).
• But he talks with Rivers, the doctor, because he doesn't "say stupid things" (36).
• I think these things combined can help us understand why Jake is who he is. Jake is isolated, and he doesn't talk much at all.
• Then a little bit later, Rivers asks Sassoon if he "might find being safe while other people die rather difficult" (36). To which Sassoon replies, "Nobody else in this stinking country seems to find it difficult. I expect I'll just learn to live with it. Like everybody else" (36).
• Another thing throughout the novel is this general hatred towards civilians who know nothing about the war. Many of the soldiers dislike them, because they have not experienced the harshness, and are still gung-ho for the whole idea. Especially for those in the medical ward, who have suffered through quite gruesome events that put them there in the first place, many soldiers feel separated from all the other people; they feel they are not understood, and they resent that. There is this them and us. Soldiers even feel distant from their family- their fathers and mothers don't quite understand what their children have gone through, and they come off more as annoying than caring.

Women during the war:

I was impressed by how expansive the effect of the war was. Soldiers, doctors, even women all felt a certain doubt about the war. Speaking of women, a relationship between a soldier (within the mental hospital) and a woman helps me understand Brett. The women during the war have actually felt a new kind of freedom- they are being paid more, their husbands (who may or may not be mean) are gone, and they feel in power of their own lives. And in respect to love, the woman in the relationship, Sarah, is both careful and reckless. I think Sarah is distrustful of men, and has lost the idea of this "romantic love" just as Brett has. Brett no longer believes in monagamy, maybe because she has seen men do the same thing she does and has gotten tired of caring about it. During the war, it seems the attitude among the women was one where they got a little tougher in the way that they thought- the traditional woman was considered weak, and they felt like they had to do everything themselves.

Some short random stuff that may spark some thought:

• Another thing I found interesting was how Rivers (the medical doctor) tells people that it is not one event that puts someone off the edge, but it is an erosion over time.
• Entirely separate from the above, I noticed that a lot of soldiers spoke in detached sentences, and one of them said they felt like it was happening to someone else. I wonder if that's what Jake kind of feels like?
• Soldiers get a lot of nightmares at night, which I think parallels Jake's realization that at night it's hard to ignore his problems.

Sexuality:

Prior, another soldier in the mental hospital, describes a battle. He talks about getting bombed at, shelled at, then walking in a straight line in broad daylight towards enemy lines. When asked about what he felt, he says, "'It felt...' Prior started to smile again. 'Sexy.' [...] 'You know those men who lurk around in bushes waiting to jump out on unsuspecting ladies and - er-um - display their equipment? It felt a bit like that. A bit like I imagine that feels. I wouldn't like you to think that I had any personal experience" (78).

Any thought in relation to The Sun Also Rises?

Masculinity:

"'I mean, there was the riding, hunting, cricketing me, and then there was the... the other side... that was interested in poetry and music, and things like that. And i didn't seem able to ...' He laced his fingers. 'Knot them together.'" (35).

For soldiers as well, there was this definition of manhood- the hunting, the riding, the adventurousness. But quite a few soldiers had a thoughtful side to them, where they wrote a lot of poetry. Intriguing, however, is the fact that out of the war, when they were recovering from a wound or something, is when they wrote their poems. There's no time between battles to do that kind of thing. Writing and creativity is something that runs throughout the novel in The Sun Also Rises- hmm...

There's this one scene that's kind of freaky and peaceful at the same time (page 39), I might analyze it a bit later- any thoughts?:

"Looking up, he saw that the tree he stood under was laden with dead animals. bore them like fruit. A whole branch of moles in various stages of decay, a ferret, a weasel, three magpies, a fox, the fox hanging quite close, its lips curled back from bloodied teeth.

He started to run, but the trees were against him. Branches clipped his face, twigs tore at him, roots tripped him. Once he was sent sprawling, though immediately he was up again, and running, his coat a mess of mud and dead leaves.

Out in the field, splashing along the flooded furrows, he heard Rivers's voice, as distinctly as he sometimes hear it in dreams: If you run know, you'll never stop.

He turned and went back, though he knew the voice was only a voice in his head, and that the real Rivers might equally well have said: Get away from here. He stood again in front of the tree. Now that he was calmer, he remembered that he'd seen trees like this before. The animals were not nailed to it, as they sometimes were, but tie, by wings or paws or tails. He started to release a magpie, his teeth chattering as a wing came away in his hand. Then the other magpies, the fox, the weasel, the ferret and the moles.

When all the corpses were on the ground, he arranged them in a circle round the tree and sat down within it, his back against the trunk. He felt the roughness of the bark against his knobbly spine. He pressed his hands between his knees and looked around the circle of his companions. Now they could dissolve into the earth as they were meant to do. He felt a great urge to lie down beside them, but his clothes separated him. He got up and started to get undressed. When he'd finished, he looked down at himself. His naked body was white as a root. He cupped his genitals in his hands, not because he was ashamed, but because he looked incongruous, they didn't seem to belong with the rest of him. Then he folded his clothes carefully and put them outside the circle. He sat down again with his back to the tree and looked up through the tracery of branches at grey and scudding clouds.

The sky darkened, the air grew colder, but he didn't mind. It didn't occur to him to move. This was the right place. This was where he had wanted to be.