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It is the spring of 1918, and Britain is faced with the possibility of defeat by Germany. A beleaguered government and a vengeful public target two groups as scapegoats: pacifists and homosexuals. Many are jailed, others lead dangerous double lives, the "the eye in the door" becomes a symbol of the paranoia that threatens to destroy the very fabric of British society.Tags
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Set in London, this second novel in the Regeneration Trilogy, continues the examination of the psychological effects of the Great War We continue to learn more about the lives of the main characters – Dr. William Rivers, Billy Prior, and, eventually, Siegfried Sassoon. It is early 1918 and the war is not going well. The hunt for scapegoats is on, and likely candidates are conscientious objectors and homosexuals. Billy Prior is working for the government. He finds out about a situation in which one of his friends was framed. He begins to experience blackouts. He reconnects with Dr. Rivers.
The writing is outstanding. The plot is intricate and compelling. The characters are deeply developed. Barker is skilled at developing a feeling of show more completeness to the story, even in the middle book of a trilogy, which is a rare talent that I appreciate. I am looking forward to reading the third and final book, The Ghost Road.
4.5 show less
The writing is outstanding. The plot is intricate and compelling. The characters are deeply developed. Barker is skilled at developing a feeling of show more completeness to the story, even in the middle book of a trilogy, which is a rare talent that I appreciate. I am looking forward to reading the third and final book, The Ghost Road.
4.5 show less
THE EYE IN THE DOOR is book two in Pat Barker's WWI trilogy which began with REGENERATION, a superb novel. The story of Dr. William Rivers and his shell-shock patients - which include poet Siegfried Sassoon - continues here, but with something of a new emphasis on things like schizophrenia, as evidenced in character Billy Prior's frequent blackouts - blank spaces in his life during which he has no idea what he might have done. The Jekyll-Hyde comparison is used more than once in the story. Indeed, the book's epigraph is a quote from the R.L. Stevenson classic. Rivers begins to better understand Sassoon's own case thusly -
"Siegfried had always coped with the war by being two people: the anti-war poet and pacifist; the bloodthirsty, show more efficient company commander ... experience gained in one state was available to the other. Not just 'available': it was the serving officer's experience that furnished the raw material ... for the poems."
The dual personality, or schizophrenia, becomes relevant not just to Prior's case, but also to Sassoon and to Dr. Rivers himself, who, like Prior, may have suffered some undiagnosed psychological trauma in his own childhood.
Lt Billy Prior, in any case, is an ingenious, fascinating and utterly believable character - a marvelous creation, and, along with Rivers and Sassoon, a character central to all three novels. Molested by a priest as a boy, he seems at times to be utterly amoral in his tortured bisexuality, and is also ultra-aware (and contemptuous) of the constancy of the English class system within the army.
While I'm not sure THE EYE IN THE DOOR is quite as good as REGENERATION, it is certainly key to understanding the complete trilogy. Or at least I think it is. I am reading book three (THE GHOST ROAD) now. Very highly recommended. Pat Barker is a marvelous story teller who has an intimate grasp of what makes people tick. Her trilogy of the Great War is a look into the horrors of shell shock, 'neurasthenia,' or, as we know it today, PTSD.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less
"Siegfried had always coped with the war by being two people: the anti-war poet and pacifist; the bloodthirsty, show more efficient company commander ... experience gained in one state was available to the other. Not just 'available': it was the serving officer's experience that furnished the raw material ... for the poems."
The dual personality, or schizophrenia, becomes relevant not just to Prior's case, but also to Sassoon and to Dr. Rivers himself, who, like Prior, may have suffered some undiagnosed psychological trauma in his own childhood.
Lt Billy Prior, in any case, is an ingenious, fascinating and utterly believable character - a marvelous creation, and, along with Rivers and Sassoon, a character central to all three novels. Molested by a priest as a boy, he seems at times to be utterly amoral in his tortured bisexuality, and is also ultra-aware (and contemptuous) of the constancy of the English class system within the army.
While I'm not sure THE EYE IN THE DOOR is quite as good as REGENERATION, it is certainly key to understanding the complete trilogy. Or at least I think it is. I am reading book three (THE GHOST ROAD) now. Very highly recommended. Pat Barker is a marvelous story teller who has an intimate grasp of what makes people tick. Her trilogy of the Great War is a look into the horrors of shell shock, 'neurasthenia,' or, as we know it today, PTSD.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less
[Regeneration], the first book in Barker's Regeneration Trilogy, was a tour de force, in which the treatment of WWI shell shocked soldiers is explored through the eyes of army psychologist, Dr. Rivers. Based on many actual people, events, and treatments, the book follows an episode in the life of poet Siegfried Sassoon and his treatment for pacifism by Rivers. In The Eye in the Door the story continues, but the focus shifts away from Sassoon, and lands squarely on Rivers and one of his patients, Billy Prior. Through Rivers' continuing crisis of conscience and Prior's deteriorating condition, this book explores the duality of personality and how it effects those who live in a hostile world, whether at home or at the front.
Billy Prior show more was a minor figure in Regeneration, but now he becomes a central character. Released from Craiglockhart Hospital due to his asthma, not a cure, Prior is struggling with his constant need for sex and fears of what would happen if he failed to keep his sadistic impulses in check. Despite his sessions with Dr. Rivers, Prior begins to dissociate between a soldier creating a relationship with a young woman and a sexual predator capable of the unthinkable. The result is a fugue state where hours, then days, are lost to Prior's conscious mind, and he fears what he might have done during the lost time. Especially once a childhood friend ends up in jail.
As Dr. Rivers struggles to help Prior and prevent his complete devolvement into a split personality, the doctor also wrestles with his own struggles with integration. Academically he thinks of the terms he and Dr. Head used during their nerve regeneration studies described in Regeneration: protopathic being the state of extreme pain that has an all or nothing quality and is difficult to locate precisely, and epicritic, or the ability to feel gradations and to precisely locate stimuli. The epicritic system provides the body with accurate information and the ability to control the more extreme reactions of the protopathic state.
Inevitably, as time went on, both words had acquired broader meanings so that 'epicritic' came to stand for everything rational, ordered, cerebral, objective, while 'protopathic' referred to the emotional, the sensual, the chaotic, the primitive. In this way the experiment both reflected Rivers's internal divisions and supplied him with a vocabulary in which to express them. He might almost have said with Henry Jekyll: 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 so radically both...
Eventually Dr. Rivers comes to the conclusion that Perhaps, contrary to what was usually supposed, duality was the stable state; the attempt at integration, dangerous.
As Dr. Rivers strives to help his patients and himself, the British homefront is in a social frenzy. Tiring of the war and eager to lash out, the country focuses on two targets: pacificists and homosexuals. The attack on pacificists leads to arrests and brutal means of forcing them to recant and support the war. The assault on homosexuals takes the form of the infamous "Black Book" with its list of 47,000 supposed homosexuals that were allegedly being blackmailed into helping the Germans, and the Pemberton Billing court case. The result of this social distrust was an Orwellian atmosphere where people feared that Big Brother was watching their private lives though "an eye in the door". The history of the attacks on these groups is both the background to the story and an enlargement upon it. The author is deft in bringing the large and the small together in a seamless manner.
Part historical commentary and part psychological and philosophical studies, The Eye in the Door leaves the reader with much to ponder. While it might not have the simple power of the author's first book in the trilogy, I was not disappointed with the second. I became caught up both in the characters and in the larger historical context. Although I dislike Billy Prior, his struggles highlight the more subtle internal conflicts faced by Dr. Rivers. And once again, I find that I have learned far more history from one of Pat Barker's historical novels than I thought likely. I am savoring the prospect of her last book in the trilogy, [The Ghost Road], which one the Booker Prize in 1995. show less
Billy Prior show more was a minor figure in Regeneration, but now he becomes a central character. Released from Craiglockhart Hospital due to his asthma, not a cure, Prior is struggling with his constant need for sex and fears of what would happen if he failed to keep his sadistic impulses in check. Despite his sessions with Dr. Rivers, Prior begins to dissociate between a soldier creating a relationship with a young woman and a sexual predator capable of the unthinkable. The result is a fugue state where hours, then days, are lost to Prior's conscious mind, and he fears what he might have done during the lost time. Especially once a childhood friend ends up in jail.
As Dr. Rivers struggles to help Prior and prevent his complete devolvement into a split personality, the doctor also wrestles with his own struggles with integration. Academically he thinks of the terms he and Dr. Head used during their nerve regeneration studies described in Regeneration: protopathic being the state of extreme pain that has an all or nothing quality and is difficult to locate precisely, and epicritic, or the ability to feel gradations and to precisely locate stimuli. The epicritic system provides the body with accurate information and the ability to control the more extreme reactions of the protopathic state.
Inevitably, as time went on, both words had acquired broader meanings so that 'epicritic' came to stand for everything rational, ordered, cerebral, objective, while 'protopathic' referred to the emotional, the sensual, the chaotic, the primitive. In this way the experiment both reflected Rivers's internal divisions and supplied him with a vocabulary in which to express them. He might almost have said with Henry Jekyll: 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 so radically both...
Eventually Dr. Rivers comes to the conclusion that Perhaps, contrary to what was usually supposed, duality was the stable state; the attempt at integration, dangerous.
As Dr. Rivers strives to help his patients and himself, the British homefront is in a social frenzy. Tiring of the war and eager to lash out, the country focuses on two targets: pacificists and homosexuals. The attack on pacificists leads to arrests and brutal means of forcing them to recant and support the war. The assault on homosexuals takes the form of the infamous "Black Book" with its list of 47,000 supposed homosexuals that were allegedly being blackmailed into helping the Germans, and the Pemberton Billing court case. The result of this social distrust was an Orwellian atmosphere where people feared that Big Brother was watching their private lives though "an eye in the door". The history of the attacks on these groups is both the background to the story and an enlargement upon it. The author is deft in bringing the large and the small together in a seamless manner.
Part historical commentary and part psychological and philosophical studies, The Eye in the Door leaves the reader with much to ponder. While it might not have the simple power of the author's first book in the trilogy, I was not disappointed with the second. I became caught up both in the characters and in the larger historical context. Although I dislike Billy Prior, his struggles highlight the more subtle internal conflicts faced by Dr. Rivers. And once again, I find that I have learned far more history from one of Pat Barker's historical novels than I thought likely. I am savoring the prospect of her last book in the trilogy, [The Ghost Road], which one the Booker Prize in 1995. show less
This sequel to [Regeneration] follows three of the characters in that book as they struggle to contend with the war. Rivers has taken a post as neurologist in London, Sassoon is wounded, back from another tour of duty, and Prior, the main focus of the book, has been declared unfit because of his asthma and works in a sector of the Intelligence agency.
Everyone feels watched. The British home command and their peers have become virulantly homophobic, even more than in peacetime, blaming them for the horrific losses of the war, and, in addition to attacking suspected homosexuals, has been attacking the pacifics protesting the war. This strains many, and allows Rivers in his capacity as neurologist (read analyst) to delve even deeper into show more his patients' lives.
As a member of intelligence, Prior is deeply divided between the people he knew growing up, active in the pacifist cause, and his own service requirements. His bisexuality doesn't give him any ease either, and he begins having totally dissociative episodes after which he cannot recall what he has done. Barker's portrayal of this is ultimately breathtaking.
Rivers, deeply involved as he is, takes on more and more of his patients' pain, to the point of having their nightmares.
"This was a dreadful place. Nothing human could live here. Nothing human did. He was entirely alone, until, with a puckering of the surface, a belch of foul vapours, the mud began to move, to gather itself together, to rise and stand before him in the shape of a man. A man who turned and began striding towards England. He tried to call out, no, not that way, and the movement of his lips half woke him. But he sank down again, and again the mud gathered itself into the shape of a man, faster and faster until it seemed the whole night was full of such creatures, creatures composed of Flanders mud and nothing else, moving their grotesque limbs in the direction of home." show less
Everyone feels watched. The British home command and their peers have become virulantly homophobic, even more than in peacetime, blaming them for the horrific losses of the war, and, in addition to attacking suspected homosexuals, has been attacking the pacifics protesting the war. This strains many, and allows Rivers in his capacity as neurologist (read analyst) to delve even deeper into show more his patients' lives.
As a member of intelligence, Prior is deeply divided between the people he knew growing up, active in the pacifist cause, and his own service requirements. His bisexuality doesn't give him any ease either, and he begins having totally dissociative episodes after which he cannot recall what he has done. Barker's portrayal of this is ultimately breathtaking.
Rivers, deeply involved as he is, takes on more and more of his patients' pain, to the point of having their nightmares.
"This was a dreadful place. Nothing human could live here. Nothing human did. He was entirely alone, until, with a puckering of the surface, a belch of foul vapours, the mud began to move, to gather itself together, to rise and stand before him in the shape of a man. A man who turned and began striding towards England. He tried to call out, no, not that way, and the movement of his lips half woke him. But he sank down again, and again the mud gathered itself into the shape of a man, faster and faster until it seemed the whole night was full of such creatures, creatures composed of Flanders mud and nothing else, moving their grotesque limbs in the direction of home." show less
'in spite of Not Believing in the War and Not Having Faith in our Generals...it still seems the only clean place to be'
By sally tarbox on 13 April 2012
Format: Paperback
Masterly novel set in the latter stages of World War 1- not in the trenches but in London. Barker marries historical characters (Siegfried Sassoon, neurologist Dr Rivers) with the fictional. The narrative features those facing society's disapproval: homosexuals and conscientous objectors and also the traumatized young men returning from the Front, torn between their hatred for the war and their feelings of duty that drive them back to join their comrades. An absolutely brilliant read.
By sally tarbox on 13 April 2012
Format: Paperback
Masterly novel set in the latter stages of World War 1- not in the trenches but in London. Barker marries historical characters (Siegfried Sassoon, neurologist Dr Rivers) with the fictional. The narrative features those facing society's disapproval: homosexuals and conscientous objectors and also the traumatized young men returning from the Front, torn between their hatred for the war and their feelings of duty that drive them back to join their comrades. An absolutely brilliant read.
“Half the world's work's done by hopeless neurotics.”
This is the second book in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy and whilst it still features some of the former's characters (the historical figures of Siegfried Sassoon and neurologist Dr Rivers as well as fictional Billy Prior) and still uses mental flashbacks it gives another viewpoint on WWI. Whereas Regeneration is set in a mental institution at Craiglockhart, Scotland and dealt principally with the psychological impact of war on its combatants this book switches mainly to London and the paranoia of the home front.
On release from Craiglockhart Sassoon returned to France in contrast Billy Prior is given a posting at the Ministry of Munitions in London. Whilst there he is forced show more to revisit his own childhood. He goes back to Salford to interview a woman Bettie Roper who has been imprisoned over an apparent plot to assassinate the British Prime Minister and to investigate the ring leader of a planned strike by munition factory workers. Billy lived with Bettie and her daughter for a year as a child. Whilst there is no doubt that Bettie is a pacifist and part of a cell who sheltered and help to smuggle other like minded young men to Ireland Billy soon realises that Bettie has had nothing to do with the plot (if one ever really existed at all)with uncorroborated evidence given by a paid informant called Scragge and is thus forced to question where his allegiances lie. As far as Bettie is concerned she is only protecting 'her boys' from the trenches of France in the same way that she protected Billy as a child. Billy suspects that she has been made a scapegoat as a warning to others who may have similar views.
This book also introduces the character of Charles Manning, another veteran of France who has been invalided out due to a serious knee injury. Manning is married with two children but also has homosexual dalliances and suffers from panic attacks because of them. This is all told against the background of a notorious real-life trial Pemberton Billing where a few notable,bigoted and paranoid characters believed that there was a plot amongst highly placed Government figures to undermine the war effort by homosexuality because it made them corruptible. Homosexuality may be tolerated in peace time but in war must be purged.
At the end of the book Billy refuses a cushy home front posting instead taking his chances that he may be posted back to France as he feels more at home there than he does with civilians who have never fought whom he generally comes to detest introducing yet another split in the country's population. In contrast Sassoon seems ready to accept a home posting.
Once again this is a well written and in many ways thought provoking book and a good follow up to the first in the trilogy. However, because it is more wide ranging in scope it lacks the gut wrenching punch of the first. That said it is still well worth the read. show less
This is the second book in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy and whilst it still features some of the former's characters (the historical figures of Siegfried Sassoon and neurologist Dr Rivers as well as fictional Billy Prior) and still uses mental flashbacks it gives another viewpoint on WWI. Whereas Regeneration is set in a mental institution at Craiglockhart, Scotland and dealt principally with the psychological impact of war on its combatants this book switches mainly to London and the paranoia of the home front.
On release from Craiglockhart Sassoon returned to France in contrast Billy Prior is given a posting at the Ministry of Munitions in London. Whilst there he is forced show more to revisit his own childhood. He goes back to Salford to interview a woman Bettie Roper who has been imprisoned over an apparent plot to assassinate the British Prime Minister and to investigate the ring leader of a planned strike by munition factory workers. Billy lived with Bettie and her daughter for a year as a child. Whilst there is no doubt that Bettie is a pacifist and part of a cell who sheltered and help to smuggle other like minded young men to Ireland Billy soon realises that Bettie has had nothing to do with the plot (if one ever really existed at all)with uncorroborated evidence given by a paid informant called Scragge and is thus forced to question where his allegiances lie. As far as Bettie is concerned she is only protecting 'her boys' from the trenches of France in the same way that she protected Billy as a child. Billy suspects that she has been made a scapegoat as a warning to others who may have similar views.
This book also introduces the character of Charles Manning, another veteran of France who has been invalided out due to a serious knee injury. Manning is married with two children but also has homosexual dalliances and suffers from panic attacks because of them. This is all told against the background of a notorious real-life trial Pemberton Billing where a few notable,bigoted and paranoid characters believed that there was a plot amongst highly placed Government figures to undermine the war effort by homosexuality because it made them corruptible. Homosexuality may be tolerated in peace time but in war must be purged.
At the end of the book Billy refuses a cushy home front posting instead taking his chances that he may be posted back to France as he feels more at home there than he does with civilians who have never fought whom he generally comes to detest introducing yet another split in the country's population. In contrast Sassoon seems ready to accept a home posting.
Once again this is a well written and in many ways thought provoking book and a good follow up to the first in the trilogy. However, because it is more wide ranging in scope it lacks the gut wrenching punch of the first. That said it is still well worth the read. show less
"The past is a palimpsest. Early memories are always obscured by accumulations of later knowledge."
Almost every page of this book is very heavy. Loaded with the memories of a war I haven't witnessed, mixing up with my days spent in the army many years ago; it always kept me uncomfortable because it, almost without an obvious effort, forced me to consider some dilemmas I don't want to face, ever. Some parts of it reminded me another great novel about the state of humanity in war: Catch-22. But of course, the dark humor is always eclipsed by the tragedy about which we can't speak much. Not for lack of experience, importance, emotions, or thoughts for that matter, but maybe what is lacking is hope.
I will remember this book not only from show more the perspective of the personal stories told, but also from the perspective of neuroscience and psychiatry, and also both from the perspective of the patient, as well as the doctor. Its literary merit lies not only in the strong narrative, intelligent descriptions of details, and piercing dialogues, but also in the way it makes the reader think about the question of 'self', and fragility of it.
I truly wish the horrible events that inspired this novel never happened. But they happened, and therefore I can only be happy that an author as good as Pat Barker captured the spirit of that time, and unrelentingly shared it with us. show less
Almost every page of this book is very heavy. Loaded with the memories of a war I haven't witnessed, mixing up with my days spent in the army many years ago; it always kept me uncomfortable because it, almost without an obvious effort, forced me to consider some dilemmas I don't want to face, ever. Some parts of it reminded me another great novel about the state of humanity in war: Catch-22. But of course, the dark humor is always eclipsed by the tragedy about which we can't speak much. Not for lack of experience, importance, emotions, or thoughts for that matter, but maybe what is lacking is hope.
I will remember this book not only from show more the perspective of the personal stories told, but also from the perspective of neuroscience and psychiatry, and also both from the perspective of the patient, as well as the doctor. Its literary merit lies not only in the strong narrative, intelligent descriptions of details, and piercing dialogues, but also in the way it makes the reader think about the question of 'self', and fragility of it.
I truly wish the horrible events that inspired this novel never happened. But they happened, and therefore I can only be happy that an author as good as Pat Barker captured the spirit of that time, and unrelentingly shared it with us. show less
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ThingScore 75
"The Eye in the Door" succeeds as both historical fiction and as sequel. Its research and speculation combine to produce a kind of educated imagination that is persuasive and illuminating . . . Occasionally the novel's pedagogic impulse, usually smoothly subterranean, surfaces. . . Ultimately, though, "The Eye in the Door" is an impressive work. . .
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Author Information
31+ Works 21,416 Members
Pat Barker's most recent novel is Another World (FSG, 1999). She is also the author of the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy: Regeneration; The Eye in the Door, winner of the 1993 Guardian Fiction Prize; and The Ghost Road, winner of the 1996 Booker Prize. She lives in England. (Bowker Author Biography)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Eye in the Door
- Original title
- The Eye in the Door
- Alternate titles*
- Men zhong yan
- Original publication date
- 1993
- People/Characters
- Billy Prior; Charles Manning; Wilfred Owen; Siegfried Sassoon; W. H. R. Rivers
- Important places
- Western Front in World War I; London, England, UK
- Important events
- World War I
- Epigraph
- 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... (show all) be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both...
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
-R. L. Stevenson - Dedication
- For David
- First words
- In formal beds beside the Serpentine, early tulips stood in tight-lipped rows.
The reader may find it useful to have a brief outline of the historical events that occurred in 1917-1918 on which this novel is based. (Author's Note) - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"There'll always be an England," he told them and ran, laughing, down the steps.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Winston Churchill's and Edward Marsh's devotion to duty while at the Home Office is mentioned in Edward Marsh, Patron of the Arts: A Biography by Christopher Hassall (Longmans, 1959). (Author's Note) - Blurbers
- O'Faolain, Julia; Kemp, Peter; Rodd, Candice; Hensher, Philip; Byatt, A. S.; Cooke, Judy (show all 9); Cairns, Daniel; Battenby, Eileen; Birch, Dinah
- Original language
- English
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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