Although at first glance, Christian themes do not seem to be present
in a significant way in Pat Barker’s Regeneration, on a
closer look, the references to Christianity, under examination,
contain a misunderstood and rather ignorant portrayal of
Christianity. One can see overt and subtle Christian meaning through
out the novel, but as a precursor to examining the content, one
should examine the title: Regeneration. Reminiscent of
resurrection or rebirth, the word she chooses seems to both evade and
deliberately suggest Christian undertones. One wonders what she
desires to suggest by her word choice; have these men been “cut
off and regrown” or are they dead and undergoing a process of
becoming alive again? It seems that for a WWI era mental hospital,
the latter would be a much more appropriate description and thus,
“resurrection” would be a much more appropriate word.
Suggesting that perhaps Barker has settled on a less appropriate
title in order to avoid her novel being associated with Christian
themes gives us a starting point for examining Barker’s
attitude towards the Christian faith.
Within Regeneration, there are three levels of Christian
references: extended discussion, general reference and subtle
allusion. As a complex novel, Pat Barker’s Regeneration
contains several examples of each but for the sake of length several
have been edited from this paper. We will begin by analyzing the
major discussions of Christianity and evaluating how, through these,
the Christian worldview is defined within Regeneration. Next,
we will continue on to examine the references to Christianity and
determine how such references portray the Christian worldview, then
continue to the biblical allusions to see what literary or functional
effect they are being used for and, finally, evaluate the major
themes within Regeneration to complete a holistic evaluation
of how Pat Barker portrays Christianity and the Christian Worldview
within this novel.
The first major discussion of Christianity takes place in Chapter 8
on pages 82-84 and begins as Owen and Sassoon are discussing poetry.
Owen mentions he likes the poem “Redeemed” and continues
on to quote most of it. After Owen praises the poem, Sassoon
denigrates the Christ-figure paradigm, and points out, correctly,
“The fact is that Christ isn’t on record as having lobbed
many Mills bombs.” (82) To a person with a biblical worldview,
the Christ-figure reference in literature can often be reduced to
little more than an endlessly inaccurate retelling of the gospel. The
resurrection of this plot seems circular, and rightfully so, but can
only be brought to truly innovative and inspiring use when used in
conjunction with an accurate biblical worldview. According to J.R.R.
Tolkien, The Christ-figure remains a viable storyline today because,
throughout time, all stories can be, at best, only a retelling of the
story of the Real Story, that is, the Christian Gospel.
(Humphrey 165) In other words, whenever someone who does not
understand the gospel or the character of Christ attempts to sculpt a
character who behaves, acts, and ultimately dies like Christ, they
will ultimately succeed only in creating a trite and one dimensional
figure. This, one could argue, is what Sassoon is referring to when
he states “I just got so sick of it in the end, all those
calvarias at crossroads just sitting there waiting to be turned into
symbols” (82).
This discussion continues on to dissect other ideas of importance to
the Christian worldview. Immediately flowing from this discourse is a
story told by Sassoon about a soldier who would use the religious
symbols, still standing through battles, and use then for target
practice, complete with blasphemous cheer to go along. What should
startle us about this passage is not the discussion itself, but
Sassoon’s comment that directly follows, “but perhaps I
shouldn’t be saying this? I mean for all I know you’re-”
(83) the troubling message Barker seems to convey through Sassoon’s
comment here is that Christians cannot deal with truth or the
realities of lost faith in difficult situations- that somehow people
should not discuss such stories with a Christian.
Owens reply is doubly troubling, “I don’t know what I am.
But I do know I wouldn’t want a faith that couldn’t face
that facts.” (83) Because of what we can reconstruct from
context in this section, we can understand Owen as saying that he is
not religious, but knows he is not Christian, because Christians
cannot face the facts. While at first the quote seems to serve only
to underscore the above remark by Sassoon, this remark can also be
understood to be not an accusation that Christians blind themselves
to reality, but that Christians sometimes blind themselves to the
facts of their own faith- a difficult line for a Christian in either
case, but further illuminated by his next remark regarding faith,
“…If I were going to call myself a Christian, I’d
have to call myself a pacifist as well. I don’t think it is
possible to c-call yourself a Christian and… and j-just leave
out the awkward bits.” (83) While this comment is an obvious
jab against churches that recruited their young men to fight and die
in WWI, it can also be view as very encouraging to a Christian. While
the former part of his comment, regarding Christians, by necessity,
being pacifist, can be debated with Augustine’s dissertation on
the Just War theory (Langan) the latter part of the quote, about
“leaving out the awkward bits” is almost the converse of
Sassoon’s indirect comment that Christians cannot look
objectively at truth.
On page 149 we see perhaps the most blatant misrepresentation (or
perhaps, misinformation) of the entire novel. There is an extended
description of the church service and the free-association narrative
helps us see into Rivers mind as to what he is thinking about during
the service. He ponders the stained glass window and thinks about the
war, his country, and civilization in the context of his church and,
more specifically, the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22:1-19,
which the narrator sums up in the following quote: “If you, who
are young and strong, will obey me, even to the extent of being
prepared to sacrifice your life, then in the course of time you will
peacefully inherit, and be able to exact the same from your sons.”
(145) The problems with this association are numerous: Abraham never
asked his son to die, Isaac never volunteer his life, there is no
evidence to suggest Isaac would have been stronger than his father
and, finally, that God intervenes before Abraham makes the sacrifice.
Biblical scholars agree that the thesis of the biblical narrative is
not the sacrifice of the young for the old, but to show the God will
provide in any situation where he is regarded as the highest
authority. Numerous critics have suggested that it is the theme of
sacrifice that provides the background of the entire novel, but I
think the Christian critic C. Lanone comes closest to uncovering the
more accurate theme, “A most moving though discreet…
implicit rewriting of the sacrifice of Abraham.” (259)
We see that Barker’s use of this biblical narrative is a
rewriting, not a retelling- and a rewriting to fit her own agenda.
Later in the same chapter, the words of a hymn are reprinted and
following the hymn’s end the narrator continues, “The
congregation, having renounced reason, looked rather the happier for
it and sat down to await the sermon.” (150) Reinforcing earlier
implicit suggestions that Christians can only be Christians if they
are ignorant, hypocritical, and blind to reality, Barker, in
ignorance of rational, biblical Christianity, blindly reasserts her
claim.
In the second chapter we find the first general references to
Christianity in two discussions, first between Rivers and Sassoon,
then between Rivers and Bryce reference Sassoon’s objecting to
the war not on religious grounds, but on a political or rational
level. In the latter conversation, brace asks, rather hopefully but
intrepidly, “Any trace of… er… religious
enthusiasm” (16) and Sassoon replies “No, I had
rather hoped for that too.” (16) At first glace the exchange
between these two doctors almost seems paradoxical, as one doctor
asks, searching for words, and very delicately phrasing, if Sassoon
is a Christian, the other replies that he had hoped he was also. So
at the same time as Bryce is carefully asking his question, as if it
is taboo or uncouth to ask, Rivers candidly replies he also had
wished he was a Christian, and in the next sentence both are
described as looking amused.
The second major reference to Christianity occurs in Chapter 14 on
page 153. In this scene Rivers is pondering the framed picture
hanging over the fireplace in his brother’s farmhouse. Citing
that it used to hang in his father’s, a speech therapist’s,
office, the narrator then describes it as a picture of the Apostles
at Pentecost. In Barker’s perceptive narrative, she then
follows the association Rivers has with this picture: “Rivers
remembered the bishop’s sermon one Pentecost when he’d
explained that the gift of tongues as bestowed upon the Apostles has
absolutely nothing to do with the ‘gift of tongues’ as
bestowed regularly every Sunday on riff-raff in various tin roofed
chapels about the diocese…And there they [the apostles] sat
still, looking, Rivers couldn’t help thinking, most
unchristianly smug about it all.” (153-154) This passage is
somewhat harder to explicate than most of the other references in the
novel. Is it Rivers or the Bishop that viewed people outside of the
Anglican tradition as “riff-raff,” is this reference to
be applied to all protestants and evangelicals, or only those who
meet in “tin roofs”, is Barker insinuating that some
branches of the church are “better” or only those with
bigger churches? The only thing that can be determined is that, at
least in River’s mind, the Anglican church is superior to such
“tin roofed riff-raff” but if the Anglican tradition is
better and claims to understand what honestly happened on Pentecost
so well, how or why does Rivers then feel that the apostles are
“unchristianly smug”?
Not finished discussing “tin roofed riff-raff” yet,
Barker probes this topic again on page 195, this time associating a
minor character with this group. Whether to re-establish the point of
such churchgoers as a lower class, to establish the background of
Sarah Lumb, or to accomplish both is up to a reader’s own
interpretation. The narrator discusses how, as Children, Sarah and
her sister Cynthia had attended such a tin-roofed chapel, but as soon
as “their bodices revealed curves…their mother had
called them to her and announced their conversion to
Anglo-Catholicism.” (195) This quote seems to elucidate the
previous question of churches as a socio-economic status symbol not a
house of worship- a problem dissected by Nietzsche several decades
before the time period of this novel.
An interesting comment, with little resolution, comes just a few
lines later: “…Cynthia had obediently ogled the young
men in the choir, while Sarah, missing the point completely, has
fallen in love with the Virgin Mary.” (195) A educated, engaged
reader cannot help but wonder, at this point, about this
inconsistencies of a young woman “in love with the Virgin Mary”
would get drunk on a first date and have sex on a second date,
particularly in a decade and society far more modest than our own. It
is a question Barker leaves us to ponder, as little resolution is
offered has to how Sarah has abandoned or compromised her religious
morals.
The first noticeable biblical allusion is on page 44, when Barker
writes “and for a second he was back there, Armageddon,
Golgotha, and threw were no words, a place of desolation so complete
no imagination could have invented it.” Here, in an allusion
many would not grasp on a first reading, Barker alludes to the place
where Christ was crucified. (Matthew 27:33) This allusion is used to
underscore the utter desolation of the front lines.
The second obvious allusion occurs on page 220, when, during a
discussion of how Willard believed Rivers had physically healed his
spinal cord injury and how the other MOs resented Rivers for his
notoriety, “Indeed, after observing Rivers acknowledge one
particularly sizzling salute [from Willard], Brock was heard to
murmur: ‘And for my next trick I shall walk on water.’”
This is a direct allusion to Jesus walking on water in Matthew 14:25
and would mean, obviously, the other MOs were comparing Dr. Rivers to
Jesus.
By examining the way that Pat Barker uses discussion, general
reference and biblical allusions, it becomes clear that although
Barker is attempting, either consciously or unconsciously, to portray
Christianity in a negative light, she succeeds only in shedding light
upon her own religious bias and inability to understand the bible and
the manifestation of an informed and intelligent Christian worldview.
Works Cited
Carpenter, Humphrey.
Tolkien: A Biography. Ballantine Books. New York, 1977;
pp. 163-165
C. Lanone. Scattering
the seed of Abraham: the motif of sacrifice in Pat Barker's
Regeneration and The Ghost Road. Literature and Theology, Volume
13, Issue 3, pp. 259-268: Abstract.
Langan, John, S.J. “The Elements
of St. Augustine's Just War Theory.” 16 Oct 2002.
<http://www.fsu.edu/~religion/jre/arc/12-1/19.html>.
