It is never easy for anyone to be away from his or her own family. Certain situations happen in ones life that forces him to leave his family behind. More often than not, one leave home for a better job elsewhere, keeping in mind that in doing so, he will be able to provide for his family and give a better life. Others, like the ones in the military, have no choice but to do his duty to the country and to help keep the country safe for his family to live in. “Soldier’s Home”, written by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize awardee Ernest Hemingway, talks about the adventure of Krebs, a marine soldier and how his life turns out when he comes back from battle. In analyzing “Soldier’s Home”, I would like to talk about the story’s characters, the theme of …show more content…
Before, he felt that he belonged among the community but now he fells alone, isolated, and different from everybody else. He becomes an outcast, mainly because he chose to stay longer and come back home years later after the war was over. It is unfair that his choices lead to evitable consequences. At first he did not want to talk about the war, probably because he was unsure if anyone wanted to listen. But when the time came that he felt safe again, nobody was there to listen to him. Imagine the feeling of alienation that he must’ve felt when he went to Germany and France, and now, he still feels the same way even though he is in his homeland. He had no choice but to lie to sound more appealing to people, but he felt disgusted with his self and began to think that his memories are just too pathetic to listen too. It’s interesting how society pressures us to be of the same level with others. He got stuck into a routine lifestyle, separated from people, physically and emotionally. It’s very hard to fathom that he couldn’t even able to relate with others to think that the main reason why we live is to connect and sympathize with people. It is clear that he is depressed, not …show more content…
She seemed to be the stereotypical conservative mother who knows nothing but to pressure her child to be someone of service to the community because that’s what she sees her friends and their sons do. It’s unbelievable how wide the disconnection seen when Krebs was having a dialogue with his mother. I think that she only shows empathy to Krebs on a surface level not like his father who he didn’t even talk about. Krebs mother focus too much on other people and being pressured by the community to get her son to be a useful part of the society, which I think is very insensitive especially for a mother. She diverts Krebs’ responses and makes him pray instead which shows that she doesn’t even listen to her son really. She makes Krebs feel worst when she subconsciously makes him feeling alienated among his own family and even in terms with God and
In “Soldier’s Home,” the main character Krebs exhibits grief, loneliness. When he returns home with the second group of soldiers he is denied a hero's return. From here he spends time recounting false tales of his war times. Moving on, in the second page of the story he expresses want but what he reasons for not courting a female. A little while after he is given permission to use the car. About this time Krebs has an emotional exchange with both his little sister and his mother. Revealing that “he feels alienated from both the town and his parents , thinking that he had felt more ‘at home’ in Germany or France than he does now in his parent’s house”(Werlock). Next, the story ends with his mother praying for him and he still not being touched. Afterwards planning to move to Kansas city to find a job. Now, “The importance of understanding what Krebs had gone through in the two years before the story begins cannot be overstated. It is difficult to imagine what it must have been for the young man”(Oliver). Near the start of the story the author writes of the five major battles he “had been at”(Hemingway) in World War I- Bellaue Wood, Soissons, Champagne, St.Mihiel, and Argonne. The importance of these are shown sentences later that the
about the war and his lack of place in his old society. The war becomes
I felt emotional while on page 100, paragraph 7 where he stated: “I guess I should have told someone, but I was too humiliated”. The fact that his father had abandoned the family and his brother who is his No 1 confidant was down with leukemia didn’t give him the courage to speak out, he was scared to the point of losing his mind, he became depressed, irritable, hypervigilant and ashamed thereby hating
A Soldier’s Home is a short story written by Earnest Hemingway and published in 1925. One of the most compelling features of the work is its brevity and omission. Lamb notes “The short story’s lack of space leads to prose that relies heavily on suggestiveness and implication, allowing the reader a greater role in bringing the narrative to life. (Lamb 2016). As a former journalist, Hemingway learned to write in concise style that put the maximum information into every word, to the point of omitting information that could be inferred or discovered. According to Earnest Hemingway:
Ernest Hemingway knows from personal experience what soldiers go through at the time during World War One. Hemingway was a “Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy. Wounded in both legs by a shrapnel explosion near the front lines” (2). Hemingway closely resemble Krebs as himself due to being a World War One veteran and experiences the Midwest expectations when reentering civilian life. In “Soldier’s Home,” Earnest Hemingway uses characterization, setting, and symbolism to develop Krebs’s struggle to fit back into civilian society after returning from World War One.
One of Ernest Hemingway’s greatest novels, “A Farewell to Arms”, has been surrounded by controversy among literary, as well as historical, scholars regarding Hemingway’s inspiration for the famous novel. Many feel that Ernest Hemingway created this fictional book solely from his imagination rather than his experiences, while others believe that Hemingway drew the inspiration for this book from his experience as a volunteer ambulance driver throughout the war. Even though there has been much controversy, there is documented historical proof that the experiences that Hemingway had experienced from his time in the war had influenced his creation of “A Farewell to Arms”.
Throughout his time during the war, he develops a way to suppress all of his feelings and emotions to survive.
Krebs returns long after the other soldiers come home missing the celebration. “By the time Krebs returned to his hometown in Oklahoma the greeting of heroes was over. He came back much too late” (844). Ernest Hemingway reveals right away in the story that Krebs war experience was far from romantic as it was persuaded in movies and advertised. “Krebs and the corporal look too big for their uniforms. The German girls are not beautiful” (844). Krebs is considered an antihero, type of protagonist, who gives in to disillusionment and hopelessness. Krebs changed so much from his experiences, however, when he returns the town is still the same. “Nothing was changed in the town except that the young girls had grown up” (845). At first,
...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.
The initial reaction I received from reading Soldier's Home, and my feelings about Soldier's Home now are not the same. Initially, I thought Harold Krebs is this soldier who fought for two years, returns home, and is disconnected from society because he is in a childlike state of mind, while everyone else has grown up. I felt that Krebs lost his immature years, late teens to early 20's, because he went from college to the military. I still see him as disconnected from society, because there isn't anyone or anything that can connect him to the simple life that his once before close friends and family are living. He has been through a traumatic experience for the past two years, and he does not have anyone genuinely interested in him enough to take the time to find out what's going on in his mind and heart. Krebs is in a battle after the battle.
The story has different elements that make it a story, that make it whole. Setting is one of those elements. The book defines setting as “the context in which the action of the story occurs” (131). After reading “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemmingway, setting played a very important part to this story. A different setting could possibly change the outcome or the mood of the story and here are some reasons why.
Even though heroism and patriotism go hand in hand in most cases, patriotism is shown comparably more in all three works as a theme. Hemingway’s novel and Alive Day share characteristics of patriotism as presented to their audiences. A Farewell to Arms specifically focuses on how America at the time of World War I believes that being a soldier is all about glory, honor, and courage. “Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates,” (Hemingway
The short story “In Another Country” by Earnest Hemingway is a story about the negative effects of war. The story follows an unnamed American officer and his dealings with three other officers, all of whom are wounded in World War I and are recuperating in Milan, Italy. In war, much can be gained such as freedom and peace, however war also causes a plethora of negative consequences. Cultural alienation, loss of physical and emotional identity, and the irony of war technology and uncertainty of life are all serious consequences of war that are clearly shown by Hemingway.
In Soldier’s Home, Ernest Hemingway is a story about a young soldier returning to his home town, bring home some drama to his life that he collected in war. Trying to find himself within his family members, despising the lies he is hearing. Having some sort of trouble to fit back into the society, living the life he once lived before he was sent to war. Harold Krebs suddenly felt trapped in his own world. The main theme of the story was the change Krebs made during his permanence in war, his emotional roller coaster that he saw at war that would affect him permanently. The writer described Krebs as a person who lost it all when he came back home, he has to choose isolation by detaching himself from social relations, love, religion. The writer wrote this story out of his experience and emotion in Krebs personality, which illustrates the insights into his arrival home and his understanding of the dilemmas of the returned war veteran.
Upon his return home, Krebs finds that the townspeople are not interested in hearing his stories about the war, but instead, “Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie” (1). For Krebs, lying led him to start rejecting his experience in war as being meaningful. “A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of the lies he had told” (1). This indicates that Krebs feels he did something worthwhile and meaningful in the war. Krebs goes on to refer to this as “the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally” (1). Hemingway never tells what that one thing was. However, due to all the lying, the “one thing,” that kept Krebs going through the war was no longer something that held any integrity for him. Many years ago I went through a very traumatic experience in my life similar to Krebs. The more I tried to forget what happen the more I became isolated and withdrawn from life and ...