REGENERATION (British, 1997, 96 Minutes) “Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori” (It Is Sweet and Fitting to Die for One's

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REGENERATION (British, 1997, 96 Minutes) “Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori” (It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country) This haunting poem by English World War I poet Wilfred Owen could well serve as a subtheme for Regeneration. The film, based on a 1991 novel by Pat Parker which was nominated for Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize, addresses the issue of post traumatic stress syndrome or shell shock as it was known in the First World War. Loosely based on actual medical case files, Regeneration is set in Edinburgh’s Craiglockhart Hospital where traumatized soldiers scarred by the horrors of battle are sent to be “cured” before being returned to the war. Current OLLI course R412 (Novels of the First World War) includes Regeneration in its reading list. Military doctor William Rivers (1864-1922) attempts to apply modern psychiatric techniques to a variety of patients under his care. Eminent writer Lt. Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) was sent to Craiglockhart through the influence of Capt Robert Graves (1895-1985 – who later produced I, Claudius for the BBC). This was an alternative to court-martial after publishing an open letter in July 1917 protesting the conduct and unjust nature of the war. Poet Lt. Wilfred Owen (1893- 1918) has his writing craft transformed into searing anti-war poetry under Sassoon’s tutelage at the hospital. Fictional Lt. Billy Prior, made mute by the trauma of the trenches, is a lower class officer who believes honor requires him to return to the fighting. In attempting to “cure” the incurable by encouraging patients to express their war memories so that they can “heal their nerves,” Dr. -2- Rivers himself slowly begins to experience a nervous breakdown. The film contrasts his methods with the brutality of electroshock therapy. Especially intriguing are the mental jousts about war and duty between Sassoon and Rivers. In the end, the three main protagonists are “cured” and released from Craiglockhart to different fates. .

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An Analysis of Wilfred Owen's War Poetry in the Light of Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory
An Analysis of Wilfred Owen's War Poetry in the light of Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory Berna Köseoğlu Assist.Prof.Dr.Berna Köseoğlu Kocaeli University, Department of English Language and Literature, Kocaeli, Turkey Abstract: World War I influenced not only the lives of “the death of Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) at the many people and changed their perspectives towards hands of German machine-gunners in the final week life but also the literary works of the writers and of the Great War has been lamented as one of the altered the tradition in literature. The Poet of World greatest losses in the history of English poetry” [2]. War I, Wilfred Owen, after participating in the army Particularly, the descriptions of the soldiers who lose during the First World War, witnessed the destructive results of the war and produced his poetry regarding their lives during the battles turns out to be his own the terrible outcomes of war when he was a soldier. The tragic end; his own death, in this regard, underlines reflection of war in his poetry proves that he was the reliability and reality of the painful condition of psychologically affected by the war and until his death the soldiers during World War I. in the war, in his poetry, he portrayed how soldiers turned out to be hopeless, helpless, exhausted and In addition, Owen, in his poetry, did not hesitate repressed by the war and why they lost the meaning to criticize implicitly the members of the and joy of life after observing the sufferings of the other government who encouraged the soldiers to join in soldiers and after undergoing a psychological trauma.
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