The Ghost Road: Trauma, Hauntology, And The Collapse Of Imperial Masculinity In Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy

Abstract

Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road (1995), the concluding volume of her Regeneration Trilogy, undertakes a sophisticated critique of British masculinity, imperialism, and the psychological devastation of World War I through the intertwined narratives of Dr. W.H.R. Rivers and his fictional patient Billy Prior. This article examines how Barker employs the dual frameworks of psychoanalysis and anthropology to expose the contradictions inherent in the British imperial project. Through Rivers’s alternating recollections of his pre-war anthropological expeditions to Melanesia and his clinical work with shell-shocked soldiers, Barker combines the ‘primitive’ headhunting culture of Eddystone Island with the ‘civilised’ warfare of European civilisation, revealing their fundamental similarities. The article argues that Barker’s use of haunting both as a narrative device and as a theoretical framework illuminates the interconnected traumas of colonialism and war. Rivers’s relationship with the Melanesian witch doctor Njiru catalyses his gradual ethical awakening, enabling him to recognise his complicity in perpetuating the cycle of violence that sends men to their deaths. The article concludes that The Ghost Road offers a vision of transformed masculinity that acknowledges vulnerability and emotional expression as alternatives to the destructive codes of imperial manhood...