Conflict In Soldier's Home

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“Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway is about a Methodist College student that goes to war from Kansas. When Krebs comes back from war, he starts a life of lying and deceit that he finds difficult to escape. Krebs continues lying about the past and his present in Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home.” Hemingway conveys Krebs’ inability to embrace the truth of the past and the present through plot in the exposition, conflict, and climax. The protagonist in “Soldier’s Home,” Harold Krebs, begins lying in the exposition about his experiences in war. The first sentence of the short story says, “Krebs went to the war from a methodist college in Kansas.” Ernest Hemingway depicts Krebs as a religious person because he specifically mentions Krebs going to a methodist college, but later on in the short story readers find that Krebs lies about his faith. When Krebs returns from the war he discovers, “That to be listened to at all he had to lie….” At this point in the exposition Krebs begins his treacherous journey into the world of lying and deceit. Krebs continues by saying, “ His …show more content…

The conflict begins with Krebs’ sister asking, “‘Do you love me?’ ‘Uh, huh’ ‘Will you love me always?’ ‘Sure.’” In this quote Krebs’ sister assures that Harold still loves her, despite Harold not going to her softball game. However, Krebs later says, “I don’t love anybody.” Krebs then proves that he lied to his sister about loving her. Furthermore, Krebs lies, once again, to his mother, “‘God has work for everyone… No idle hands in his kingdom’...’I’m not in his kingdom.’” Earlier in the story Hemingway mentions that Krebs went to a methodist college. Because of this, readers believe that Harold is a religious person; however, when Harold says “I’m not in his kingdom,” readers believe the opposite. The conflict of “Soldier’s Home” supplies an abundant amount of evidence that Harold cannot embrace the truth of his past or

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