Beginning

• Presented as a fatherly figure early on. Advice giver to Sassoon who he somewhat admires. Very patient with the emaciated state of Burns. Shows a genuine concern for his patients. A different side develops under Prior where he is put to the test with his stubborn selective mutism. Tested by Prior, but soon enough they establish a great bond.
• Rivers dream: him and Henry Head researching nerve regeneration Head volunteers for experiment and Rivers conducts reluctantly. Head receives a lot of pain to the forearm. The scalpel is then turned to Rivers and jabbed into his arm,then he awakes frightened. Rivers concludes the dreams message: it highlights his own fears of his method of treatment. He forces his patients to relive their traumatic experiences and since it is experimental he doesn't know full effect of it.
• Rivers' dream: He realises encouraging his patients to speak up he is going against the basis of manliness upon which both he and they have been raised.
• Rivers is reluctant to shelter and help a "coward" who just wants to escape the fighting. Rivers is also concerned that bringing Sassoon to Craiglockhart will bring bad publicity to the hospital. Eventually, however, Bryce talks Rivers into taking Sassoon as a patient.
• At dinner on the first day he meets Sassoon (that night) Rivers admits to Bryce that he likes Sassoon very much. He finds him impressive and completely in his right state of mind.
• Rivers hesitant about admitting Sassoon into CL. Bc he surmises from clarity of the protest that Sassoon is not shell-shocked, it seems wrong to allow Sassoon to hide away in CL rather than continue to fight. As a psychiatrist, Rivers is charged with the task of making patients well enough to return to France. Yet Rivers is a scientist and an anthropologist before he is a military man. He has a hard time reconciling his duty to send the men back to the front in light of his knowledge of the horrors that they will find. Torn between personal feelings and his duty,Rivers questions every decision
• CH5: Rivers goes home and prepares his nightly bath. He constantly thinks about the hospital and the welfare of his patients. He resents the luxury Sassoon has to object to the war. Though Rivers wants nothing more than for the war to end so that he may return to his research in Cambridge, he understands that it should not be left to another generation to fight German militarism.
• CH5: Rivers goes to sleep. Later he wakes from a nightmare and yadda yadda you know what happens