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26SECTION 6 STUDENT ESSAYS
Maria Alekseeva; fourth-year student Chelyabinsk State Pedagogical University.
Essay on Regeneration by Pat Barker
I'm back again from hell With loathsome thoughts to sell;
Secrets of death to tell;
And horrors from the abyss.
Siegfried Sassoon
If the world was a person, it would certainly need psychological help in one particular case. And this case is a war. It's a serious mental disorder, insanity, which penetrates into all the cells of the world-organism, people. And the truth is that there is no universal method of its cure. Some of the cells die, others suffer all their lives and only few of them manage to find their leucocytes.
In Pat Barker's book Regeneration the lives of several contaminated people intertwine with each other. They are patients of one particular leucocyte, Dr. Rivers. He becomes some kind of an accumulator of their thoughts and feelings. And his work together with his own reflection makes him come to a very significant conclusion concerning the war "Nothing can justify this. Nothing nothing nothing."
Definitely, nothing. But the problem is that even if we understand this, still we are not able to stop it. "It's as if all other wars had somehow distilled themselves into this war, and that makes it something you almost can't challenge", says one of the patients, Wilfred Owen. In his words echoes of another problem are identified. Every war seems to accumulate all the agonies and cruelties of the previous ones, and
what is more it adds its own brutal peculiarity.
But what makes people go and catch this madness? In most cases it's only one word, the ruthless word DUTY. This word may, if used incorrectly, turn a good, kind-hearted person into a thoughtless machine for killing. And what happens if a person's heart is strong enough not to let him lose himself? If it makes him hesitate whether it is necessary to be so cruel? The contaminated military machine will put a stamp on him of being an outcast, a betrayer or even a lunatic. Thus, Siegfried Sassoon says about his friend Graves: "It suits him to attribute everything I've done to a state of mental breakdown, because then he doesn’t have to ask himself any awkward questions". Indeed, it's much easier to regard somebody's behavior as abnormal if it doesn't suit the society's standards.
These society's standards are sometimes two-faced. They may conceal inside all sorts of stereotypes and prejudice, which won't let a person take a single step on his own. "You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face", thus says Rivers, and these words reveal the bitter truth about any society, even the most democratic. "They don't want the truth", says Prior about the parents of dead soldiers, "They want to be told that George - or Johnny - or whatever his name was, died a quick death and was given a decent send off. Naturally, they don't want to be told that their son was blown up into thousands of pieces by a bomb so that there was nothing to be buried. The truth may be even more horrible. And this is the war. No one can change its rules or rather its violations.
"I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has become a war of aggression and conquest", writes Siegfried Sassoon in his Soldier's Declaration, which becomes a cry from the heart of a soldier who has not only seen but "endured the suffering of the troops". "I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it". Every statement of this Declaration becomes a challenge to the society standards, to the people, who regard "the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize", with "the callous com-
placence",
Sassoon addresses To the Warmongers in his poem "For you our battles shine/ With triumph half-divine;/ And the glory of the dead/ Kindles in each proud eye. / But a curse is on my head, / That shall not be unsaid,/ And the wounds in my heart are red,/ For I have watched them die." Pride, that is a part of one of the war-stereotypes, the one which essence is implied in Prior's statement that war is "the Club to end all the Clubs". Each member of this Club is glorified. No wonder that there are so many young people who are eager to be a part of it. But they seem to enter the war being blindfolded. Very soon they begin to understand that it is Death who is the first to pay the reward. "And the Great Adventure - the real life equivalent of all the adventure stories they'd devoured as boys - consisted of crouching in a dugout, waiting to be lolled", these are Rivers' thoughts, which grievous truth should be the bandage for the young eyes instead of thoughtless bravado.
But who needs the moral when the great achievements seem to be so close? And the imaginary idea incites the novices into the vicious circle, from which there is no way out. It starts with "the silencing of a human being", as Rivers calls it. "You must speak, but I shall not listen to anything you have to say", tells Dr. Yealland to his patient. And his words become nearly one of the main principles of any military authority. Another principle says that the best quality of a soldier is his obedience. So, does he need freedom? Certainly not! It will let him think. That's why "in a war nobody is a free agent". And this Rivers' thought refers not only to soldiers but also to doctors as well as to psychiatrists, whose main aim according to the war-standards is to "fit young men back into the role of warrior, a role they had - however unconsciously - rejected." This is Rivers' tragedy. He says about Sassoon: "It's his duty to go back, and it’s my duty to see he does". Again this ubiquitous word duty. And for Rivers it becomes nearly a splinter in his heart. He cares for his patients, he wants to cure them. But at the same time he can't but understand that every time he cures them, he makes a new portion of healthy cannon-fodder. And who would do this deliberately? Only those who have no choice. It's little wonder that
Prior says to Rivers: "You know one day you're going to have to accept the fact that you're in this hospital because you're ill". A strange thought that the doctor is in the hospital not because his patients are ill but because the disease is in him is a very important truth which makes the kings and their pawns change their places.
No matter how cruel the war is, still there are some people whose souls are insusceptible to all its dirt. And what is more, as Rivers thinks: "One of the paradoxes of the war - one of the many - was that this most brutal of conflicts should set up a relationship between officers and men that was domestic". It is possible because we are humans, not animals (though animals would never start a war). The innocence of a baby is common among all people when they come into this world. Our feelings are free. They can easily be hurt by outside attacks but only a person himself can allow them to die. And such strong feeling as love can penetrate even in the war. In the book the love between Prior and Sarah is a warm island in the sea of the horrors of war. And it's so touching to observe how this curing flower gradually blossoms out on the ground of the feeling of loneliness.
But social prejudice and narrow-mindedness make some of these feelings outlawed. "Fear, tenderness - these emotions were so despised that they could be admitted into consciousness only at the cost of redefining what is meant to be a man", says Rivers. And what can be more natural than the feeling of fear, the instinct of self-preservation? We were not bom to be suicides. Had it been so, our civilization would have vanished from the face of earth long ago. But still the dread of being called a coward wipes soldiers to go back, to return to the hell of war. Another side of their inner conflict is the feeling of guilt. Thus, Rivers says: "Everybody who survives feels guilty". And Siegfried Sassoon echoes this idea in his poem "In bitter safety 1 awake, unfriended; / And while the dawn begin s with slashing rain/1 think of the Battalion in the mud./ When are you going back to them again?/ Are they not still your brothers through our blood?" This feeling of guilt shouldn't be underestimated; it made one of the most convinced adversaries of the war, Siegfried Sassoon, go back to this abyss without any hope to survive.
So, the dark terrible reverse of a war is boundless. And as we still prove to fail dismally in our attempts to exist without wars we shouldn't forget Sarah's statement: "If the country demanded that price, then it should bloody well be prepared to look at the result". We are responsible for our actions. And if we destroy something, we should be sure to restore it again. Nobody has managed to restore the life of a dead yet. And this should we bear in mind. And if all other methods of treatment for the world's madness don't work, then we will certainly need Regeneration.
» i; Natalia Zolotaryova; fourth-year student ’ " " Perm State University
On Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge
Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge is a truly breathtaking novel. A story is based on real events: the Crimean War (1853-1856) fought between Imperial Russia on one side and an alliance of France, the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. But unlike other literary works describing this war [Karen - What about Tolstoy!!!!] the author shows it from the “inside”, through the history of common people who occurred there as fate had willed. The writer reveals all the uselessness of every war in the book.
The events are shown through the eyes of the main characters: Myrtle , Dr Potter and Pompey Jones. Each of these characters writes 2 chapters in the book. To my mind it is a splendid means to show the inner state of the characters without excess descriptions, their nature, priorities and world outlook, their reactions toward the war happening around them. At first the family of Master Georgie thought that this trip would be a voyage to a resort, picturesque places near the sea. But the reality was different from what had been expected.
The author transmits her knowledge with the help of Dr Potter who is a connoisseur of art, well - educated and intelligent person. He knows history and has a great life experience. Dr Potter uses a lot of
