The Horror of Pity and War in Regeneration by Pat Barker and Collective Poems of Wilfred Owen

The Horror of Pity and War in Regeneration by Pat Barker and Collective Poems of Wilfred Owen

Through reading ‘Regeneration’ by Pat Barker and Wilfred Owen’s

collection of poems, we see both writers present the horror and pity

of World War I in an effective way. ‘Regeneration’ shows us a personal

account of shell-shocked officer’s experience in the war. This links

with Wilfred Owen’s poems as they too show how war affects the

soldiers. Even though ‘Regeneration’ (a prose piece) and Wilfred

Owen’s poems (poetry) are similar, they both present different styles

as they are written at different times, a male and female perspective

and in different literacy forms. Barker has a much more objective view

of the war, as she hasn’t actually experienced it first hand in term

of being a soldier and she is removed in time. However, even though

she didn’t take part in he war, it was very much a part of her life,

which qualifies her to write about the horror and pity of the war. Pat

Barker explains in her interview () that her step father and grand

father were a part of the war, which effected her as she talks about

seeing the war wounds on her grand father’s shoulder and how her step

father was gassed and later he died of bronchitis. The writers use

different styles to allow the reader to understand the war because one

is a poet who was actually there and the other an author who wrote

much later. For the most part the reader views see things through the

eyes of William H. Rivers. Barker is keen to point out that she did

not wish to write about trench warfare pretending her narrator was

already there; (she calls this a’ psuedo – combatant novel’) t...

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... and dying for your country,

which links to his poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. Both the novel and

Wilfred Owen’s poem link especially in ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ as

both Sassoon and Wilfred Owen worked together, through this we see

join of the two texts. Wilfred Owen also features in ‘Regeneration’ as

a patient in Craiglockhart hospital as he was an historic fact. Pat

Barker includes him in it not to change facts, but to find a creative

way around it. Barker joins both fiction and facts in her novel, which

we can see when Sassoon and Owen work on the poem together.

Both writers show the horror and pity of the war and they views on the

damaging effects in an effective way through the use of language,

style and perspectives of the war, showing us the readers and how it

affected the soldiers physically and mentally.