Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

Page 6 Candidate Number: FYW812

of flail, and the snake was hissing’ (Barker 1991, p.28). The rod appearing in Anderson’s dream as a negative symbol is significant, as it represents the doctors and nurses in his life, who are dishing out potentially emasculating treatments, which furthers the societal pressures Anderson feels due to his medical condition. Through the dream, Barker shows that the pressure which Anderson felt due to his unfulfilled duties must have been so significant that it is having an impact of his subconscious thoughts in the form of a nightmare. Eventually in the dream, Anderson’s father-in-law gets hold of Anderson and ties his up with ‘a pair of lady's corsets’ (Barker 1991, p.28), which represents how the dehumanising societal views on injured men during the wartime make Anderson feel helpless and emasculated. In a society where manly self-reliance and fortitude is highly valued, Anderson feels as though he is being tormented by society, in particular by his father and other men, for his sickness and inability to serve. Anderson is ashamed of being seen in a vulnerable and debilitated condition, and ‘finds being locked up in a looney bin an… emasculating experience’ (Barker 1991, p.29). Through the depiction of Anderson’s nightmare, Barker shows readers the extensive levels of humiliation which hospitalised soldiers underwent, and how this impacted the subconscious thoughts of these helpless soldiers. Another supporting character representing a different perspective on emasculation is Willard, a patient at Craiglockhart Hospital who is paralysed from the waist down. Willard believes that his paralysis is caused by a physical injury, however, countless doctors have examined him and told him that his spine is not damaged. This shows that Willard is so opposed to the helplessness and dependency of his condition that he is ‘reluctant to concede anything that might suggest his illness was not purely physical’ (Barker 1991, p.113). Furthermore, Willard realises that Rivers believes that the reason he cannot walk is because he does not want to go back to fight, but Willard does not want to admit this, because ‘it would be tantamount to