war there is no going back

“He was used to being adopted s a father figure”

-river deconstructs binary opposition between masculine and feminine

-both a father figure and omniscient

-treatment methods subvert conceptions of gender by forcing them to reveal emotion

“Sensitivity to whats going on… is not best sown by bursting into tears over the causality list “

-rivers emotional outburst, when talking with Sassoon he is horrified by we effects but ties to justify why other people don’t care

-knows internally it cannot be justified in any way but he has to do his duty and stop Sassoon from questioning and protesting against the government but his stuttering reveals how he agrees with Sassoon but is controlled by duty

“Enormous emphasis on love between men-comradeship…makes crystal clear the penalties for the other kind”

-pointing out the hypocrisy: societal support of male relationships founded on mutual love of war, violence & patriotism, but shames them when this love becomes romantic

“The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth”

-repeating words from bible, alludes to genesis

-power of the bible

-“ imagination” evolved throughout years of it biblical history. It’s first meaning, Hebrew, is plotting evil

-in biblical terms it’s definition has dual meaning, both the “power” to form mental images and forcing images in preparation for evil action, the imagination i seen as a double edged sword

-burns has always seen imagination as evil. Hi mirrors god who sent a flood to stop mans senseless destruction but could not change the heart and imagination of man. Men still go on to use power of creativity to destroy, uninterrupted by decimation of many, either by flood or war, unlike god however, burns feels he must destroy his imagination.

“All the questions from you, all the answers from me”

• rivers feels oddly sympathetic towards him: his immense amount of irritability towards prior remind him of his own relationship with authority in the guise of his father who epitomised the collective authorities of the family, educations and the church. Their shared anger at the authority highlights rivers rejection of patriotism and blurs the socially imposed line of doctor and patients

“When you put uniform on in effect you sign a contract”

• reveal a deep and complex attitude towards war and protest- shaped by traditional Victorian an Edwardian values

• He believes by putting on a uniform your signing a contract to give your life to the country

• recurring motif of uniform representing duty and shackles, chaining them to the war

• Uniform represents the control the war has over them

“The great adventure…consisted of crouching in a dug out waiting to be killed”

• comradeship and caring among soldiers. Rivers thoughts about how brutal war atrocities strengthens bonds among soldiers

• Rivers cynical thoughts on idealised image of war. “Great adventure” metaphor for war - honour, death traps

• Rivers realises he is a pawn in a massive war machine.

“Corpses… used to strengthen parapets, to prop up sagging doorways”

• horrific image of hopelessness and devastation

• Whilst the propaganda was used to go fiery the war, we see dead soldiers here being displayed in a way far from dignified and much more gruesome

• This hopeless image highlights own sense of helplessness and powerlessness as he feels unable too fulfil his roles as burns doctor, as well as reflecting on the issue of sending men to war

“Nothing justifies this. Nothing,,, nothing, nothing”

• repeated twice in the chapter, he is starting to align with sassoons ideology

• His first-hand experience of the truly detrimental impacts of war through Burns, forces his anger at the system to the forefront of his brain as he can directly observe the truly detrimental impacts of war

• We gain introspection into rivers inner struggle between morality and war, and the reader developed an affinity to him, as his charter reflects a modernist way of thinking within traditional Britain

“You must speak, but i will not listen to anything you have to say”

• paradoxical statement (antithesis) whereby a an is silenced by the veery process of being given back his voice. Indeed, the only speech that will be heard is that which signals subordination to military authority

• Written in italics, demonstrating his superiority, summing up the absolute doctoral control he had

• Unlike rivers, who encourages patients to converse with him as an equal as part of his therapeutic process

“Abrahams sacrifice”

• rivers, out of hospital, in cure, sense f doubt, questioning christianity loss of faith

• Fundamentally can’t understand how god would move in mysterious ways

• Leaders trying to embody god, rivers loss of faith in war effort, realises he is sacrificing patients by sending them to front

“They [his hallucinations] just looked puzzled, they can’t understand why I’m here”

• hallucinations symbolises his guilt

• Survivors guilt manifests itself as these hallucinations

• He feels guilt about relaxing here with others fight, feeling a sense of duty to fighting with his comrades

“They had been trained to identify emotional representing at the essence of manliness”

• shows how emotional repression leads to further breakdown

• Rivers recognises how toxic masculinity and Victorian ideals worsen soldiers emotional state but still can’t do anything about it because its his duty to help these soldiers return to war

• This masculinity stoicism is the cause of the problems suffer by his patients

• Rivers seemed to understand the extent of what he is asking for from his patients, such that they must defy their entire sense of identity & upbringing in order to recover

• This is something he himself struggles with, as he is “excavating the very ground he stood upon”

“More of a sort of…male mother”

• maternal protection and affection

• Oxymoron, contradicts itself, male mother doesn’t exist irrefutably possible- reflects societal attitudes ad presents rivers as omniscient: societal attitude that soldiers who can’t fight aren’t real men. But instead are children who have to be nurtured by their mother

• Rivers bridges gap between masculine and feminine, and convinces patients to challenge social construction ad re-evaluates what it means to be a man

“A rattling caterpillar”/ “ the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay”

• anthropomorphic imagery of caterpillar, idea that soldiers unable to detransition from life on front line to home front, in the same way that the caterpillar could not transition into a butterfly

• Suggesting the war permanently damaged the potentials so many young soldiers

• Soldiers are destined to “decay” even after serving war because they will never truly recover from war’

“You will never make me feel”

• represented nature of man

• Having no emotion to prior is rendering control

“No doubts..just a straightforward, headlong retreat towards the front”

• paradoxical, would normally expect to retreat from the front but instead retreating towards war

• Idea that he does not have to face his complicated feeling towards the war

• Seems to have a longing for both death and belonging that are both fulfilled by returning to fight

• Combat & the company of other fighters ight be the lace he feels he belongs

“Craiglckeart has done to Sassoon what the same and arras had failed to do”

• “Failure”2- suggests that Sassoon, identity was actually reinforced by the front- his courage and his sense of duty were forged in that environment-clear purpose of protecting his comrades

• Paradoxical and ironic that he gets worse in a place that is meant to make him better

“In bitter safety, i awake unfriended”

• adjective “biter”: he doesn’t feel he deserved this safety, so. It is only right that he return, survivors guilt

• “Unfriended”: he feels abandoned

• This is an extract from a poem titled “sick leave”, title ironically representing his guilt s he is not even sick so he feels like a fraud

“A thing yellow-skinned man…choking and gagging”

• readers first introduction to this character draws out immediate attention to this physical appearance, emphasising the seriousness of the psychological damage was has done to him

• “Choking” and “gagging” at food like a baby, war reduced here soldiers too children

“Skin- and bone casing for a tormented alimentary canal”

• although accustomed to treating patients whose endured extreme horrors, the forlorn tone in relation to Burrs case highlights his symbolic role as the most extreme human cost of war

• “Casing”= soldiers treated as dispensable, connoted a shell/ billet casing, suggesting soldiers treated as pieces of equipment

• “Alimentary canal”= purposeless & insignificant when removed from battlefield

“The Circe of his companions. Now they could dissolve int the earth like they were meant to do”

• extended metaphor f these birds as his fallen companions that he could not save nor give proper burial too

• He gives them he burial they deserve

“It had certainly depended his love for his country”

• slight patriotic sentiment here, perhaps showing the power of propaganda, and an attempt to reconcile this with hi personal war experienced

• Echoes many other conflicted feelings in the novel, including Sassoon and Owen

“A prematurely aged man and a fossilised schoolboy seemed to exist side by side”

• juxtapositions of ideas about his personality demonstrating how war is unnatural destructive force that has caused simultaneous ageing and regression within burns

• Shows how soldiers have been unable to grow because key years off development have been taken from them because of war so now they are trapped in this in between of having witnessed so many horrors in their lie forcing them to become “fossilised” in time but they are also trapped as a school boy because they have no experience living in the world as anything other than a soldier or “school boy“

“His naked body was white as a root“

• one of the it’s powerfu; and evoking sciences vivid imagery to enhance surreality

• “White”, implies purity and cleanliness evokes side of inhibited femininity.

• Simile of roots alludes to boudoirs concept of gender, where a women is defined as a man without manliness, Burns is resent as a mere root that ultimately contributed to the masculine tree, like the perception, a women contributes to a mans world. This loss of manliness segregates him from society, who see him as unworthy of poverty, due to lack of masculinity

“The haunted faces, the steamers, the stumbling… craiglockheart frightened him re than the front ever did”

• barker blurs the line between “tangible and intangible within the walls “of the hospital, so that the character are sucked into the quicksand of nightmarish visions and nocturnal visitations

• Juxtaposition between serene daily activities like patients playing golf, while they suffer from nightmares in the night

• Hospital overweights the trenches in terms fuelling fear- the enemy is himself in the hospital

“Not at the front of the hospital where the mutilations might have been seen by passers by”

• these “figures no longer the size & shape of men” were rendered completely undignified and kept hidden from public

• Barker bringing to light thee shaking treatments of such soldiers, theme of sacrifice

• Refers how society hides the grim costs of war even for itself, treating it as an inconvenient truth, showing the general disregard society held towards the suffering of these soldiers

“They looked like machines, whose sole function was to make other machines”

• idea that these workers have almost become dehumanised, and lost all. Sense of individuality to their jobs

• The treatment of those on the home front as equally dispensable as the soldiers, perhaps the two genders aren’t as alienated from each other other as we might think

• Chremomorphic metaphor

“He needed her ignorance to hide in”

“He wanted to know and known as deeply”

• the ignorance of those on the home front is a comfort for soldiers, who desperately want o escape the horrific reality of the front lines

• Juxtaposition/. Internal conflict: to show the duality of the soldiers mind- they crave authentic, deep intimacy yet their trauma prevents the from fully sharing their horrific experiences

• Trauma narratology: technique, common in war literature, reveals the limits of language. The horrors of WW1 are deemed too devastating to communicate, creating a barrier between Sara and prior, leaving the soldier feeling misunderstood

“102,000 last month alone…i never forget it for a second”

• sassoons character: guilt and trauma- the statement indicates sassoons unshakeable memory of the causalities of war, emphasising his survivors guilt

• Reflects on the emotional burden he carries as a soldier who has survey when others have not

• Sassoons defiance against war: sassoons acknowledgement of the war’s realities represents a critique of the government complacencies

• sassoons survivors guilt: guilt manifests self through hallucinations that represent his struggle with the conflict between feeling fortunate to be alive and the pain of those lost

• This personal battle exemplifies the psychological trauma