Middle

• CH9: P asks R why it is that he stammers. R is taken aback and says that there is no known cause; it might be genetic. Prior suggests that maybe it is Rivers who is ill; maybe there is something that he has been trying not to say for fifty years. That night, Rivers is trying to finish some paperwork when Prior comes in to apologize about his rude manners that morning. Prior admits to Rivers that he has not yet told him about his dreams because his shell-shock nightmares sometimes strangely intermix with sex. Rivers suggests that now might be a good time to try hypnosis, and Prior agrees to it.
•  CH9 reflection after hypnosis: One patient years ago had likened him to a "male mother." He resents the fact that the quality of nurturing remains female, even when performed by a male, but he recognizes that the relationship among men in the trenches is domestic, and often quite maternal. He also reflects on the paradoxes of the war: that something so manly should end up so domestic, that men were "mobilized" into holes where they could hardly move, and that "manly activity had turned into feminine passivity." As Rivers goes to sleep, he wishes he were young enough to serve in France.
• CH10: Rivers reflects how much easier it would have been if Sassoon were not his patient. Sassoon forces him to make justifications for the war every day. Rivers truly believes that it is the war, and not man's innate weakness, that has caused all the mental problems he treated. This viewpoint means that Rivers has had to convince himself that the war justifies such destruction of men's minds.
• CH13: Rivers deals with a hectic day consulting issues with Anderson, Prior, Willard, Featherstone, Broadbent and Burns. After a long day hegoes to bed but wakes up in the middle of the night with terrible chest pain. Bruce examine shim, and concludes he is suffering from an irregular heartbeat. rders him to take three weeks vacation.