Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

Page 8 Candidate Number: FYW812

Even when Prior regains his ability to speak, he still remains ‘defensive… [and even] tougher’ (Barker 1991, p.49). This defensiveness and detachment make Prior’s relationship with Rivers quite problematic – Rivers wants Prior to speak about his emotional struggles in order to cure him through the Freudian psychoanalysis treatment, however, Prior always finds a way around the questions being asked. When asked to speak about what happened at war, Prior responds by saying just because he ‘remember[s] it, doesn’t mean [he] want[s] to talk about it’ (Barker 1991, p.50). Prior constantly seeks power over Rivers and avoids sharing his experiences at war, because it would let out his inner emotions and he is afraid of breaking down. In a society where sharing emotions was a feminine thing to do, Prior continuously tries to maintain his masculinity by remaining silent about his hardships. His silence about his feelings becomes so overwhelming, that even though Rivers has acknowledged that Prior is ‘capable of a great deal of detachment, but [he had] have to be inhuman to be as detached as that’ (Barker 1991, p.78). ‘Prior's attitude throughout the three weeks [Rivers] spent trying to recover his memories of France’ (Barker 1991, p.79) was very unhelpful, as the Freudian psychoanalysis methods of treatment which Rivers utilised, required patients to make their unconscious thoughts conscious in order to release their repressed emotions (McLeod, 2014). Despite Rivers’ efforts to treat Prior through psychoanalysis, Prior ‘seemed to be saying “All right. You can make me dredge up the horrors, you can make me remember the deaths, but you will never make me feel.”’ (Barker 1991, p.79). This attitude displayed by Prior was common amongst soldiers at the time – young men, who enlisted to be recognised as masculine, brave soldiers, became scarred when confronted with the shocking reality of war. However, these men facing psychological damage could not express their feelings in fear of breaking down and feeing emasculated. Instead many soldiers dealt with all of their hardships and struggle through silent stoicism, to prevent their masculinity being further stripped from them.