“Regeneration Trilogy” by Pat Barker (post 7): Judging by portrayal of Billy Prior, the second and third novels of this trilogy were written by different personalities.

The handling of Billy Prior’s multiple personality in the second and third novels of this trilogy is so completely different, you would almost think that these two novels were written by different people.

In the third novel of this trilogy, Billy Prior’s previously emphasized, seriously distressing (to him), multiple personality (see past posts) is now briefly mentioned as a joke and then completely forgotten.

In Chapter One of The Ghost Road (1), while he is under evaluation by the military board to decide whether he is fit to return to combat (WWI), Billy Prior, who wants to return to combat, thinks:

“And really, amidst the general insanity, was it fair to penalize a man merely because in conditions of extreme stress he tended to develop two separate personalities? You could argue the army was getting a bargain” (1, p. 438).

In the rest of this novel, chapters two through eighteen, he does not have any more of his previously frequent memory gaps—even under conditions of extreme stress, in combat, which is described at length—and the whole issue of his multiple personality is completely forgotten. Let me emphasize, he is not described as overcoming, or having recovered from, his multiple personality: his previously highlighted condition is simply never mentioned again.

This remarkable phenomenon—multiple personality is featured in the first half of a work, but is almost completely forgotten in the second half of that work—is surprisingly common. In fiction, I described it in past posts on Graham Greene, Gillian Flynn, and Joyce Carol Oates. In nonfiction, multiple personality is repeatedly described in Volume One of Doris Lessing’s autobiography, but is absent from Volume Two.

1. Pat Barker. The Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration [1991], The Eye in the Door [1993], The Ghost Road [1995]. London, Viking/Penguin, 1996.