His damaged house leaked memories of Jane and the children, and of himself too, as he had been before the war, memories so vivid in comparison with his present depleted self that he found himself moving between pieces of shrouded furniture, like his own ghost.
Manning so scarcely recognizes himself now that it is as if his former life, pre-war, was lived in color, and his current life, after fighting and years of fear of being discovered as a homosexual, is lived in black and white, or a nothing shade of grey. Before the war, he had not explored his sexual appetites or predilections, because he was living with his wife and children all the time, and his identity as a family man, husband and hands-on father was one that made him happy, and one in which he knew himself, and where he was, in his life. There was no uncertainty in it. Now his life is nothing but uncertainty. He was injured in action and so is dealing with the feelings of worthlessness in not being able to go back and join his men; he is uncomfortable with the feeling that other soldiers, particularly Prior, who is working hard to be passed fit enough to go back, might view him as some kind of shirker, and he is not entirely sure in his own mind that they are not right. He is also dealing with the constant fear of being "outed" and the shame that would bring on his family. Walking around his old home, and being able to picture the life that he used to live in it, is akin to an out of body experience, and he feels like he has died already, since his old life is never coming back. He is like his own ghost, revisiting a happy time, rather than someone who is still alive, and vibrant, and optimistic, with the promise of normalcy again. The description of Manning's difficulties in dealing with normal life again after what he saw on the front line are also similar to those of his fellow soldiers of all ranks who are finding it almost impossible to come home and slot back into their old lives and families again, which is what is expected of them.
She was one of those who felt every death. She'd never learned to read the casualty lists over breakfast and then go off and have a perfectly pleasant day, as the vast majority of civilians did. If she had learned to do that, she mightn't have been here.
Beattie Roper cannot view "casualties" as a list of names, or as a faceless group of people, or even as a side-effect of the war. She viewed them all as individuals. Each name on the list, to Beattie, was a young and promising life lost, a son, a father, a husband. Each name was a man who had gone terrified to war in the name of men who stayed behind in their offices without a very good plan for the men at the front. The majority of people were able to compartmentalize the list of names that they read, would think how sad or tragic it was, and then disassociate themselves from it, because it had happened to "other people". Beattie was unable to do that and consequently was unable to turn away deserters who were shell-shocked or just plain scared to death, or those who genuinely believed their conscience could not allow them to kill others just because their government told them to do so. This empathy and feeling that an injustice was taking place drove her to act in a way that singled her out as a subversive, and that had made her into someone the authorities felt needed to be neutralized for the duration of the war. Prior believes that if she had not been so empathetic, and so driven to follow her conscience, she would never have ended up in jail at all.
He looked quite different, suddenly; keen, alert, cold, observant, detached, manipulative, ruthless. Rivers realized he was seeing, probably for the first time, Prior's public face. At Craiglockhart he'd been aggressive and manipulative, but always from a position of comparative helplessness. At times he'd reminded Rivers of a toddler clinging to his father's sleeve in order to be able to deliver a harder kick on his shins. Now, briefly, he glimpsed the Prior other people saw; the Lodes, the Ropers, the Spragues, and it came as a shock. Prior was formidable.
Because Prior lets his guard down somewhat when meeting with Dr Rivers, and needs his help to make sense of his shell shock and mental anguish whilst he is in treatment, he presents a different self than he presents to everyone else. Although some of the traits are there, such as his tendency to view his conversations with Rivers in a "quid pro quo" way, wanting information from Rivers about his personal life in return for answering Rivers' questions about himself, Prior has never shown his ruthless and sociopathic side to his psychiatrist. It is also telling that he was quite so adept at hiding this side as even a renowned psychiatrist such as Rivers is surprised when it shows itself; it is not something he revealed or unearthed without Prior's knowledge. The sudden change in Prior in front of Rivers can be likened to the observations made by the surviving victims of serial killers, who are surprised when the person they were talking to before becomes suddenly different, ruthless, icy cold. This tendency also validates Prior's admission about himself, that he is a predatory sexual sadist, although the fact that he is able to admit and recognize this shows that he does not have the psychopathic tendencies to actually be a danger to anyone. To others, he is ruthless (Sprague sees his aggressive, icy demeanor) and the Ropers see his detachment, as he is not swayed by any nostalgic need to protect them if they are actually guilty. Prior's character enables him to excel in a war zone as his detachment enables him to carry out plans methodically and efficiently without feeling the effect of each death that occurs in front of his eyes. The question that is not answered by Rivers, or by the reader, is whether or not his character was always like this or whether it became this way due to the trauma of the war.
