Part 1 Chapter 2 Summary

William Rivers is a doctor who practices at a veteran's hospital. He helps treat broken men who have come back from the war. Dr. Rivers' current patient is a man named Ian Moffett, who suffers from hysterical paralysis. While Dr. Rivers has not discovered the cause of the paralysis, he has found a way to treat it.

Dr. Rivers often reminisces about his childhood, which is, in part, how readers will get to learn who he really is. His memory of specific events lay against a backdrop of an unhappy childhood embedded in the throes of wealth and comfort.

Pulling himself out of his reverie, Dr. Rivers goes back to the stack of files upon his desk. He looks at a new patient's file, Geoffrey Wansbeck. Geoffrey's problem is that, after killing a German soldier at the front in France, he...