Revisiting history through gothic evocations in Pat Barker’s regeneration trilogy /

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2015

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Hoş, Gül Deniz

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This thesis aims at analyzing how Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy evokes traditional and modern Gothic elements in terms of settings, shell shocked soldiers’ trauma-induced spectral illusions, overwhelming effect of past on present, and dissociative identity disorder. The trilogy reveals Gothic-like atmosphere of the First World War as well as its reflection on the characters’ frames of mind. By incorporating Gothic elements into her trilogy, Barker offers a multi-dimensional reading and also emphasizes fragility of human body and psyche, because holistic, stable and secure self is prone to scatter in case of excessive external and internal pressures. In the trilogy, physical wounds reveal deeper psychological fractures, from which the past perpetually leaks into the present. The recurrent and catastrophic intrusion of war reminiscences into today echoes a prevalent gothic theme of the past’s disruptive, shadowy, and overwhelming effect on the present. The specters haunting the soldiers represent an alternative cryptic language to restate their inexpressible devastations and apprehensions. Based on Sigmund Freud’s concept of “Uncanny”, how the character’s continual return of the repressed fears disrupt linearity of time, and how this might lead to dissociative identity is touched upon in v conjunction with the concept of Gothic double. The shattered psyche due to war trauma gradually becomes worse on the face of uncanny experiences and stifling effect of the past. The characters strive to deal with phenomenon of alienation from their surroundings, and most essentially from their own selves.

Subject Keywords

War neuroses, Soldiers, Psychiatrists, England

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12618461/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/24430

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Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

G. D. Hoş, “Revisiting history through gothic evocations in Pat Barker’s regeneration trilogy /,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2015.