by Wayne Spitzer

Created on: July 31, 2007

Alienation: The theme of the 20th-century novel
The Return of the Soldier:
Anger and Alienation in
Pat Barker's Regeneration

"On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised [sic] on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize."

- Siegfried Sassoon
A Soldier's Declaration
July 1917

"In civilian life, every man walks point for himself, and there's no
safe way to approach a friendly perimeter. Every step you take is a
risk. Everybody is trigger-happy because everybody is afraid. Love
is a no man's land where you must fear more than just your
enemies. One false move in the dark and you get wasted by your
friends. That's the spider in the Valentine."
- Gustav Hasford
A Gypsy Good Time

Of the themes and nuances present in Pat Barker's Regeneration, it is her treatment of the returning soldier's estrangement from his society that is the most palpable. Indeed, estrangement seems the perfect parallel: if society, like marriage, may be viewed as a contract, than, surely, returning soldiers such as Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and Wilfred Owen may have felt that contract to have been broken - betrayed, as it were, by an insincere government and an indifferent civilian population.

Pat Barker's book suggests that this estrangement is only transitory, that there are ways to reverse it, to "cure" it. Even so, she suggests it evasively, hinting ominously that if we do so, it is only to perpetuate the situation which initiated the condition in the first place: war. Regardless, that an estrangement exists is incontrovertible, as is suggested in this passage from early in Regeneration, in which Sassoon finds himself sharing a train cabin with, it would seem, people more alien to him than the German soldiers he has been killing:

"By arriving an hour early he'd managed to get a window seat. He began picking his way across to it through the tangle of feet. An elderly vicar, two middle-aged men, both looking as if they'd done rather well out of the war, a young girl and an older woman, obviously travelling together. The train bumped over a point. Everybody rocked and swayed, and Sassoon, stumbling, almost fell into the vicar's lap. He mumbled an apology and sat down. Admiring glances, and not only from the women. Sassoon turned to look out of the window,

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