Doomed Youth?

I was looking through my old school work, and happened to stumble across a gem that I thought lost, after my old computer was wiped by a virus.  What I found was a near completed draft of a ‘creative coursework piece’.  It was the only real opportunity throughout the entirety my A Levels to write something creative, and it was entirely optional:

Prose Text Coursework on Regeneration by Pat Barker

For this essay you can:

·         Either write a conventional essay that explores some aspect of the text, like characterisation, theme or structure, with a focus on your personal informed interpretation of the text.

·         Or you can do a piece of creative transformational writing, such as an alternative ending, a ‘missing chapter’, a letter from a diary of a character in the novel.  This piece will be assessed against the same Assessment Objectives as a more conventional essay, so it will need to reflect the writer’s style, the way the characters are realised etc. 

What might surprise people is that only two members of the class (perhaps even the whole year!), including myself, took up the opportunity.  For education to have crushed creative sparks so completely that the majority are inclined towards the conventional stresses the conformist, and almost drone like quality, that is unfortunate outcome of our education.
 

This isn’t at all a slight against my teachers, they were really excellent in encouraging my choice to do something creative, and gave some great feedback.  This is a slight against the system overall. We seem overwhelmingly inclined towards the familiar, and that is no way towards progress.

But enough ranting, I would love to share what I wrote and have done my best to avoid editing it.

To give a little context for those who haven’t read Regeneration, Rivers is a doctor working at Craiglockhart mental hospital during the First World War, and Burns is one of his patients.  Burns cannot eat without vomiting, following his experience of being plunged head first in to the belly of a corpse, by the force of an explosion.  In Chapter 15 Rivers, who is taking time from work due to his own symptoms, visits Burns and is surprised to find him alone.

 

Creative Coursework Task:  Insert into Chapter 15 to show the effects of being at Craiglockhart mental hospital on Rivers

 

(Before) Quote from novel: Despite Burn’s reluctance to mention his illness, Rivers didn’t believe he’d been invited to Suffolk to talk about Church architecture.  But it would be quite wrong to force the pace.  Whatever was bothering him, he would likely raise the matter in his own time.

Insert:

Rivers woke at half past five in the morning with a faint pain in his chest.  A squeezing feeling was still present as blood forced itself through his veins, but thankfully his bladder wasn’t pleasing to be emptied like usual.  As he rose his heart pounded against his ribs forcing him to rise slowly as he peeled himself away from his pillow that was damp with sweat.  Rivers took a sip of water from the bedside table and put the glass down softly.  He had to admit that even if he still felt worse than usual, a change of scenery and a day without commitments felt good.

Rubbing his eyes, Rivers gazed out of the window.  A mist was beginning to form beyond the clouded glass and a band of light rose over the horizon.  It was early, the fishing boats were still specks in the distance and the only sound that could be heard was the slow, deliberate rolling of the waves.  Rivers smiled to himself; today would be an easy day, a day that seemed so unfamiliar.  As Rivers sat on the edge of his bed he stretched out his legs allowing himself to relax, he finally had opportunity for personal reflection, a luxury that he had been deprived at Craiglockhart.  Rivers took slow, deep breaths and put his hand to his chest, the irregularity seemed to be subsiding, which was a good sign.

Rivers took one last gulp of water that forced itself down his dry throat, turned his pillow over so that it was warm and dry and then slipped his legs back beneath the covers that absorbed his legs like a clinging mud.  As he lay there, a dream seemed to come back to him, pictures disjointed and unexplained.  He knew what they were as they grew clearer and clearer in his mind.

The door creaked suddenly.  Burns cast his shadow over River’s bed sheets, taking him by alarm.  Burns had a faint ghostly quality in his dressing gown as the sun showered light through the window behind him.  Rivers squinted and brought his arms up to shield his eyes, like a man futilely protecting himself from a coming shell.  He smiled wearily.

“What are you doing up so early?”  Rivers asked, taking in the scene before him.  Burns looked tired, not as bad as he had been at Craiglockhart, but certainly close.  It never came as a surprise that Burns ignored the nature of the question.

“I –” Burns groped for words, “heard movement in your room, I wanted to check you were okay.”  Rivers knew the real reason, he felt like a Schoolmaster presented with an uncomfortable schoolboy, but was determined to let Burns bring up his illness on his own and so he let it pass.

“I’m fine,” Rivers lied, taking his own turn to not be entirely honest and dismissing any question of his own personal problem.  However he knew Burns wasn’t convinced, he looked like a quizzical child who had received an unsatisfactory answer.  Burns opened his mouth to reply.

“Really?  I guess you’d tell me those groans were the wind.”  Rivers let saliva run slowly down his drying throat.  Questions swam through his head.  He was reluctant to accept any obvious signs of his own symptoms – but hadn’t he displayed some already?  He heard Bryce’s voice echo in his mind, “Psychosomatic symptoms are REAL”.  But Rivers surprised even himself as he began to talk.  He knew he had changed since his start at Craiglockhart but he had never been an open person.  He was renowned for being quiet, he was conservative, and he was a man cursed with a stutter.  He was a typical man of his generation, he was private.  But he concluded that it was his patients, Sassoon, Layard, and Prior in particular, who had eroded his shell so that he was able to express emotions he felt he never could have before.

“I had a dream,” Rivers said.  He paused, pondering over his words carefully as Burns perched himself at the foot of his bed; Rivers couldn’t talk about the war directly, he couldn’t risk making Burns relapse by describing what he’d seen and his own forcing of a topic that was so far tabooed.  Burns frowned and Rivers continued cautiously.  “I saw things that I… that I’m not comfortable discussing”.  He said simply, putting emphasis on his last words as a method of caution as pictures flashed behind his retina; an eye rolled in his palm that was sticky with sweat, he let it slip away and land on the decapitated corpse below.  Rivers blinked, trying to force the image out of his head but another seemed to take its place: He saw himself running forward, breathing restricted by a corset dripping with a sickly mud, Prior to his right wheezed and struggled with laughter, and Anderson to his left emerged from the belly of a corpse beside him, vomiting violently.  Then Rivers saw his father shaking his head dismissively and repeating the story of “the careful cat catching the mouse”, before he disappeared under a barrage of shells and smoke.  A soft voice brought him back to reality.

“Rivers?”  Burns spoke uneasily, Rivers had obviously paused more than he had hoped.  He quickly regained composure.  Acknowledging Burns, he expressed his tiredness and unwillingness to talk any more.  He had decided that he would need to rest and was once again wishing in an odd way that he could experience life on the front; he doubted war was as horrible as having to run at guns in a corset, even if it came close.  Ruffling his bed sheets, he put his hand to his chest and noticed the irregularity was once again becoming more prominent.  He willed himself to relax and inhaled deeply, feeling his heart’s barrage upon his ribs slowly come to a halt.

He thought silently about the oddness of his dream.  It seemed to be an amalgamation of both his life experiences and images he had ‘borrowed’ from his patients.  He knew he couldn’t work at Craiglockhart much longer before it drove him mad and noted that once his term was up he would have to hand in his resignation, no matter how much he cared for his patients.

“Thanks for checked up on me at such unorthodox hours.  I’ve worked too hard for somebody of my greying age, and I’m sure you understand, my dreams aren’t enjoyable,” he smiled forcibly and Burns nodded, slowly frowning.  He paused for a few seconds, thinking.

“I guess you’d rather be at Craiglockhart.” He said slowly.

“No-o.”  Replied Rivers.  He was smiling which took Burns by surprise.

“No-o, what?”

“Here I actually get to sleep.”

There was a short pause and then they looked at each other and laughed.  Rivers suddenly felt tired, he rubbed his eyes once again and Burns stood up smiling.  Rivers noted how little the bed rose after the weight, from Burn’s emaciated frame, was alleviated and felt his eye lids begin to become much heavier.

“Sleep well Rivers.  I’ll be up nice and early, sleeping can cause even the most comfortable… discomfort.”  He paused, trying to remember how to talk to guests, “I – er, hope you don’t mind cereal, I’ve, um, never been much of a cook.”  Turning, Burns walked slowly towards the door, he grasped the bronze door knob and turned it slowly, pulling the old door open.  Rivers burrowed deeper into his sheets and curled up into a comfortable foetal position, “see you in the morning,” he said quietly.  The door creaked once again as it was pulled to and Rivers allowed his eye lids to droop, the world blurred and he fell into a deep sleep.

 

(After) Quote from novel: Rivers woke the following morning to find the beach shrouded with mist.  He leant on the window sill, and watched the fishing boats return…………

 

The saddest part of all, for me, is that I am in some ways another casualty. I have not written anything creative, of real length, since I wrote this 4 years ago, nor did I for years before it. Is creativity squandered in this country, just like the lives of those lost on the front?