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Regeneration Pat Barker

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Submitted By carterkatie
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Katie Fifield
''Analysing aspects of form, structure and language, explore the ways Barker develops the theme of social class difference''

In Pat Barker's novel Regeneration she explores the effects that World War I has on the human condition and more specifically on the condition of a group of characters. Historical figures, such as the war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and the military psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers, are interwoven into the novels, yet it is important to note that while Barker's research on their lives infuses her characterizations, they are inventions as much as reclamations, endowed with psychological depths that she imagines for them. Similarly, Barker purposefully deploys language in self-conscious ways.
Barker mixes fiction and fact so seamlessly. Most of her characters existed as mentioed above, the real life character's involved all did spend these months of 1917 at Craiglockhart together. The novel takes you into their private world. We see the young, idealistic poet Wilfred Owen shyly giving his poems to Sassoon for advice
Class differences were only too apparent within Britain's military entities. The Army structured itself around class and in many ways, recreated the British class system in miniature: aristocratic generals, middle-class officers, and a working class rank and file. This structure reinforced on the war front the class distinctions of the home front, and the long-standing prejudices of the British class system ensured that enlisted men were treated almost like children, it is clear that this relates to the character's involved in Regeneration. Barker uses characters to enable us to understand the shocking reality of the social class difference. Some soldiers also played the role of a servant and waited on officers of high class who enjoyed luxuries unheard of to those existing in the grime of the trenches.

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