Close Analysis: Rivers and Prior pp. 95-97

In chapter 9 of the novel ‘Regeneration,’ Pat Barker paints Prior as an officer at the frontline who suffers great agony of the war and directly gets affected with mutism himself. Prior is one of the patients in Craiglockhart mental hospital and he refuses to speak, to open up with doctor’s treatments. That is where the motif of silence strikes in. Silence embraces the inability or, in the other words, refusal to speak of patients in the hospital ever since they all have the thoughts of fear, fear to rewind their frightening pasts on the battlefields, fear of revealing their true selves as mental, and as well, fear of emasculation. Prior first arrives at Craiglockhart refusing to speak or cooperate. Representing other patients at time, Prior symbolically serves as an element of a protest factor to the war. On the other hand, silence acts as the defensive line of the whole society of men who are muted from the war.

The motif of silence relates to the theme of class division because it is implied by Dr. Rivers that mutism is ‘by far the commonest symptom amongst the private soldiers,’ while ‘officers don’t suffer from mutism.’ He emphasizes that the reason why mutism is more commoner within the private soldier rank rather than the high class officer is because ‘the consequences that a private soldier would get of speaking his mind are always going to be far worse than they would be for an officer.’ That leads directly to the concept of ‘class division’, in which is an unsolvable problem in most societies. According to Barker, which ever classes you are put into, you are meant to be treated as how you are labeled. That stereotype/discrimination is even judgmental to illnesses, directly interfered with the matter of life and death, or in the other words, the lives’ prices. On page 97, Prior mentions ‘the desk,’ and how people on ‘the other side of the desk’ are treated. The desk here represents the gap between the ‘authority’ and the ‘powerless figures’. Therefore, Pat Barker has successfully challenged the notions of class divisions and the dreadful effects that those have on people living in war time.