The Eye in the Door

Ms Barker's epigraph, a quote from Stevenson, sets the tone: "It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man. I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both."

I am hampered in critiquing the trilogy, since I've read only the first two works, REGENERATION and THE EYE IN THE DOOR. The first of these concentrates on the relation between the enlightened, humane Dr Rivers and the war hero/war protester Siegfried Sassoon, who has been labeled a war neurotic ("shell-shocked") in order to avoid confronting his rational case against the war. Both Rivers and Sassoon are historical characters who the author effectively fictionalizes (their dialogues, etc).

The second novel focuses on the relation between Rivers and Billy Prior, a relatively minor character in the first. The book is set on a wider stage than REGENERATION, which was confined to the (real) mental hospital of Craiglockhart in Scotland. Here we are in London, during the crisis produced by the initial success of the Germans' spring offensive in 1918. As happens during defeats, the search is on for scapegoats seen as undermining the war effort, groups like pacifists and ... who are seen as destroying the nation's "moral fiber." Ludicrously, the leading anti-... crusader, lays the blame on the Germans, who are said to have sent homosexual agents over before the war to corrupt English youth.

Billy Prior, on medical leave from the front, works for a counter-intelligence agency, but his loyalties are divided, since his earliest friends are pacifists and "conchies" (conscientious objectors). The result of these divided loyalties is a split consciousness, where the fugue state ("Hyde") takes over at times, doing things that the "daytime" Billy is not aware of, but whose consequences nevertheless he must face. It is this split consciousness that Rivers must deal with-and on one occasion, he deals directly with "Hyde," who speaks of Billy in the third person.

At the crisis of the novel, Billy's alter ego betrays his closest friend, something that the daytime Billy at first denies doing, but which he finally comes to suspect he has actually done. Rivers treats the psychological phenomenon by making Billy see that it is basically Oedipal, that he actually wished to kill his father, who had, in Billy's sight and hearing, beat and abused his mother. One manifestation of this hatred is "Hyde's": punching the agent provocateur Spragge, who looks like Billy's father. To complicate the issue, his father is a socialist/pacifist, a fact which may contribute to Billy's ambivalent attitude to his pacifist friends, one of whom he helps, as he betrays the other.

Sassoon make another appearance here, having gone back to France (partly at Rivers' suggestion), and once again been wounded (by friendly fire). But Sassoon's appearance doesn't seem to contribute to the plot of this novel, tho it may have a role to play in the trilogy as a whole. (Maybe his divided consciousness is relevant, since he was very effective at killing Germans, but at home becomes a "dove") Another seemingly extraneous thread is Manning, one of Billy's sex partners.

But basically a rich novel, recalling a key point in Western history. In many ways, WWI was more traumatic than WWII, since it occurred after almost a century or relative peace in Europe. And, as Barker makes clear, WWI was harder on soldiers than was WWII.

Trivia: Why were French troops show on the covers of the paper editions of the first two novels? They play no role in the novels themselves (tho they played the major role on the Western Front).
January 24, 2004

A lovely book that always has the lightest of touches in the darkest of moments. Nothing is simple and nothing is complicated, but everything is ambiguous and dwarfed by "the front" and what is expected.

The writing is always simple, but the ideas, concepts and dilemmas dealt with are complex and impossible to resolve. Class and duty are themes; the most interesting theme in my opinion is that of being a pacifist, a father figure to your men and a violent war hero simultaneously. (By the nature of things, war heroes are violent.)

My one regret is that I have only just realised that this book is part of a trilogy and that I have read it out of sequence... although on the positive side it means I have two more books to explore. I would strongly recommend this book; I have just gone and bought one of Sassoon's books as a direct result of it awakening school hood poems by him and Wilfred Owens.
November 28, 2003