Barker has chosen to tell the tale from the viewpoint of the patients and staff of a war hospital, which treats mainly psychiatric injuries caused by battle. Straight away we are dealing with issues of masculinity. These patients have been discharged, not for receiving injuries in the line of duty, something that people would have thought of as honorable in some ways, but because they have had nervous breakdowns, previously the realm of female ill health, as pointed out by Rivers,
[...] Representations of history and regeneration by Pat Barker The purpose of historical narrative: . fictional story telling as well, is intimately related to, if not a function of the impulse to moralize reality. [p.269] Hadyen White Throughout Regeneration, it is possible to see that Barker has used the historical structure of World War I to challenge more contemporary ideas about liberty, gender, equality and society itself. The world which Barker has created . wears the mask of meaning . [p.270] and it is not simply a novel about the suffering caused by the war. [...]
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