Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

Page 9 Candidate Number: FYW812

Prior, like many other mentally disturbed soldiers, is so against accepting his illness as a psychological one and is repulsed by the methods which Rivers attempts to use to cure him. Prior is so against the idea of willingly sharing his emotions, that Rivers offers to try hypnosis to cure his illness. Through the success of Rivers’ hypnotism, the readers learn that Prior is traumatised from picking up the eye of a fellow soldier whilst he was shovelling the remains of two dead men. Prior had ‘cleaned up dozens of trenches [before, and he doesn’t] see why that would make [him] break down’ (Barker 1991, p.105). Prior doubts himself and feels ashamed of his emotional meltdown, especially because he doesn’t ‘think of [him]self as the kind of person who breaks down’ (Barker 1991, p.105). Through the gruesome description of the eyeball, which is even described as a ‘gobstopper’ (Barker 1991, p.103), Barker shows how soldiers felt shame for being vulnerable even in horrific and sickening situations like the one Prior encountered. Through this, Barker places readers in a position to better understand the societal pressures which men endured during this time. Furthermore, Prior, like many other soldiers at the time, not only had a difficult time at war, but at home too. Young men at this time were constantly pressured to be manly, and Prior especially felt this pressure from his father. Prior’s dad is an extremely harsh man with many expectations for his son. He is ashamed of Prior for being mentally ill and says that Prior would get ‘more sympathy from [him] if he had a bullet up his arse’ (Barker 1991, p.57). Prior is ridiculed for being hospitalised for a mental illness by his own father, and it can be seen that this severely affects Prior’s feelings of masculinity and intensifies his fears of society’s judgement. Prior’s father in the novel epitomises fathers in the 19 th century who placed pressure on their sons, thus intensifying the feeling of emasculation of injured soldiers returning home. On the other hand, Prior’s ‘mother was always pulling [him] the other way’. Prior’s mother thought that ‘Billy [Prior] was different’ because of his asthma and tried to keep him indoors