Professional Documents
Culture Documents
“Regeneration” is a novel about power and resistance to it. It is set in World War
I England and it centers on the experiences of Dr. Rivers, a military psychologist. Dr.
officer who refuses to fight on principle and shows no signs of insanity like Dr. Rivers’s
other patients do. Dr. Rivers establishes himself as a fatherly (or in some cases motherly)
figure in order to get his patients to talk about what happened to them so that they can
overcome their symptoms and return to the war. In one case, a soldier was sent to him to
be cured of homosexuality. This particular patient was not insane, but he broke a state
mandate that all soldiers be heterosexual. All of River’s patients need to return to the war
because the state tells them that it is wrong to not fight in the war. In the end, even
This novel drives home the message that concepts of power begin in the family.
The trenches and the patients relationship with Dr. Rivers is constantly being compared to
the relationship between a child and their father or mother. As the novel goes on it
illustrates how the state imposes its will on the sex lives of its citizens. Dr. Rivers tells
Sassoon to keep his private life private or else he could be punished for having
homosexuality. A woman is scolded by a doctor when her abortion gets botched. Dr.
Rivers theorizes that there is a kind of biblical contract where people pledge undying
allegiance to a state so that some day they can be part of the state and others will pledge
undying allegiance to them. Another psychologist, Dr. Yelland, uses his power to torture
people into submission to the state through the use of electroshock and cigarette burns.
Dr. Rivers creates the same results as Dr. Yelland but in a more humane way. By the end
of the novel Dr. Rivers himself sees himself as a cog in the wheel of government and that
his function is to help to enforce the idea that it is wrong to not fight in the war. He is not
satisfied that his role in the war is ethical and therefore resolves to rebel in some manner.
the book, he was telling people that if they do not believe in the war then they should
protest the war like he was. At the end of the book he goes back to fight even though he
structuralist to me, in that the deep structure of power originates in the family. The role
of the mentally ill and the dangerous individual reminded me of some of the writings of
Foucault. Foucault said that some individuals do not fit into the state’s system of power.
These individuals must be brought to heel or be destroyed by the state. The state does
this through indoctrination, but when that fails prisons and asylums are used. At the same
time, Foucault said that the power of the state can not exist without these dangerous
individuals. One famous quote from Foucault is that, “resistance presupposes power.”
This means that if there were no resistance then power would be obedience, which is a
different dynamic that can not be described as power. Resistance and power are
returns to the front. Now he can be held up as an example by the state when they tell
people that even if they disagree with the war, it is their responsibility to fight in it.