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The killer ernest hemingway analytical essay
Ernest hemingway topics, themes, and motifs
Ernest hemingway topics, themes, and motifs
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Lost
Returning home from war is something that can be devastating for a soldier. Everything and everyone around you has changed. People no longer look the same. Places no longer look the same or are now nonexistent. Life as you know it is not the life you knew at all. In “Soldier’s Home,” Ernest Hemingway describes the way life was and life is now for soldier Harold Krebs.
People expect soldiers to come home and just pick up where they left off. The soldiers are used to being at war and having structure behind everything that they had to do. Krebs was a soldier who was in the late stages of war. He returned home after all of the other soldiers had returned with open arms. He did not see himself as much of a soldier. “His lies were
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“He was sleeping in late, getting up to walk down town to the library to get a book, eating lunch at home, reading on the front porch until he became bored.” (2)
Krebs and his father had a disconnected relationship. His father was in real estate and seemed to be more involved with his work than his family. His father owned a car and would never allow Krebs to drive it prior to going off to war. Krebs was nothing like his father nor aspired to be. His mother on the other hand adored him. “His mother would have given him breakfast in bed if he had wanted it.” (2) His mother is very concerned about the way Krebs has been living his life since his return home from war.
Krebs is battling with all of his emotions after returning home. He has lost who he was and how he feels about the people around him. He feels as if he is to fit right back into the mold of society and forget about the tragic war he had just
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“If you want to take some of the nice girls out riding with you, we are only too pleased. We want you to enjoy yourself. But you are going to have to settle down to work, Harold. Your father doesn’t care what you start in at. All work is honorable work he says.” (6) She does not understand all of the things that are going on inside of Krebs. She does not understand that he is not the same person he was before he left. In his mind these things no longer matter to him. The mold that society has created is not of any importance anymore. “It wasn’t any good. He couldn’t tell her, he couldn’t make her see it.” (6)
His emotions have shut down for even the ones who love him the most. “I’ll try and be a good boy for you.” (7) Everything around him had changed but most of all he had changed. He decided he would pick up the pieces and do as if he was asked. “He would go to Kansas City and get a job and she would feel alright about it.” (7) He masks everything and everyone around him to try and fit back into the stereotypical life he should
Krebs is a detached being who just wants to keep his life as uncomplicated as possible. He doesn't receive the same hearty welcome as his fellow soldiers, thanks to his returning home so much later than the rest. At first he doesn't want to talk about the war, presumably because of the atrocities he experienced there, but when he later feels the need to talk about it, no one w...
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, transports the reader into the minds of veterans of the Vietnam conflict. The Vietnam War dramatically changed Tim O’Brien and his comrades, making their return home a turbulent and difficult transition. The study, titled, The War at Home: Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on Post-War Household Stability, uses the draft lottery as a “natural experiment” on the general male population. The purpose of the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) study is to determine the psychological effects of the Vietnam War on its veterans. In order to do this, they tested four conditions, marital stability, residential stability, housing tenure, and extended family living. However, it neglects the internal ramifications of war that a soldier grapples with in determining whether they are “normal” in their post-war lives. Thus, effects such as alienation from society, insecurity in their daily lives, and the mental trauma that persist decades after the war are not factored in. After reading the NBER study, it is evident that Tim O’Brien intentionally draws the reader to the post-war psychological effects of Vietnam that may not manifest themselves externally. He does this to highlight that while the Vietnam war is over, the war is still raging in the minds of those involved decades later, and will not dissipate until they can expunge themselves of the guilt and blame they feel from the war, and their actions or inaction therein.
After a decade of not seeing his mother and brother, Howard returns to his hometown in Mississippi. It is evident how thrilled he is. As the train approaches town, he begins “to feel curious little movements of the heart, like a lover as he nears his sweetheart” (par. 3). He expects this visit to be a marvelous and welcoming homecoming. His career and travel have kept his schedule extremely full, causing him to previously postpone this trip to visit his family. Although he does not immediately recognize his behavior in the past ten years as neglectful, there are many factors that make him aware of it. For instance, Mrs. McLane, Howard’s mother, has aged tremendously since he last saw her. She has “grown unable to write” (par. 72). Her declining health condition is an indicator of Howard’s inattentiveness to his family; he has not been present to see her become ill. His neglect strikes him harder when he sees “a gray –haired woman” that showed “sorrow, resignation, and a sort of dumb despair in her attitude” (par. 91). Clearly, she is growing old, and Howard feels guilty for not attending her needs for such a long time period: “his throat [aches] with remorse and pity” (par. 439). He has been too occupied with his “excited and pleasurable life” that he has “neglected her” (par. 92). Another indication of Howard’s neglect is the fact that his family no longer owns the farm and house where he grew up. They now reside in a poorly conditioned home:
Although in different ways, the two women have lost what was most crucial to them. All Carlene Kipps ever wanted was to “love and be loved” however, as she was dying of cancer, clearly weak, lethargic and sick, her family never noticed. Kiki “married her best friend”, and moved to the city of his choosing. There she was pushed into the mold she didn’t know how to fill, and just as she felt she lost the ability to be who she truly was in public, she lost the ability to communicate with her husband in private. Through their genuine empathy and honestly, Carlene and Kiki were able to transcend the differences that separated the rest of their families to become exactly what the other needed. Carlene needed someone to love her, someone to listen, someone to care. Kiki needed someone to be honest with her, and to allow her to be honest in
Many individuals look at soldiers for hope and therefore, add load to them. Those that cannot rationally overcome these difficulties may create Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tragically, some resort to suicide to get away from their insecurities. Troops, notwithstanding, are not by any means the only ones influenced by wars; relatives likewise encounter mental hardships when their friends and family are sent to war. Timothy Findley precisely depicts the critical impact wars have on people in his novel by showing how after-war characters are not what they were at the beginning.
This affects each soldier when the war is finished. When a soldier returns back to his home after the war, he is unable to escape his primitive feelings of survival.
...often times tragic and can ruin the lives of those who fight. The effects of war can last for years, possibly even for the rest of the soldiers life and can also have an effect on those in the lives of the soldier as well. Soldiers carry the memories of things they saw and did during war with them as they try and regain their former lives once the war is over, which is often a difficult task. O’Brien gives his readers some insight into what goes on in the mind of a soldier during combat and long after coming home.
Throughout the story, he seems to be facing contradictions and conflicts on who he is. For example, he talks about the love of reading books and the love of audio books. He admits that they provide different feelings, and he wants to experience both of them. He listens to podcasts while sitting down and reading books. It is a persona who might want the best of both worlds and will not settle with one or the other. He speaks of the self-righteous indignation in the ‘War’ poem being unforgivable. When he reminisce on the poem, he wishes that he is still the boy he once was. The boy that was conscious of the world and not who he has
Previously, the narrator has intimated, “She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own.” Her thoughts and emotions engulf her, but she does not “struggle” with them. They “belonged to her and were her own.” She does not have to share them with anyone; conversely, she must share her life and her money with her husband and children and with the many social organizations and functions her role demands.
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
Tina Chen’s critical essay provides information on how returning soldiers aren’t able to connect to society and the theme of alienation and displacement that O’Brien discussed in his stories. To explain, soldiers returning from war feel alienated because they cannot come to terms with what they saw and what they did in battle. Next, Chen discusses how O’Brien talks about soldiers reminiscing about home instead of focusing in the field and how, when something bad happens, it is because they weren’t focused on the field. Finally, when soldiers returned home they felt alienated from the country and
Tim O’Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his short story “The Things They Carried” presents the effects of the war on its young soldiers. The treatment of veterans after their return also affects them. The Vietnam War was different from other wars, because too many in the U.S. the soldiers did not return as heroes but as cruel, wicked, and drug addicted men. The public directs its distaste towards the war at the soldiers, as if they are to blame. The also Veterans had little support from the government who pulled them away from their families to fight through the draft. Some men were not able to receive the help they needed because the symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) did not show until a year
...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.
What has been existed in life after the war? Nobody knows "how it was going to be afterward." Man's life will be totally changed. They will be unable to come back with their natural and normal life. They seem lost everything; their families, their hobbies, their lives, and they'll has nothing from the war's ravages. The image of soldiers of Hemingway' story has sustained injuries due to fighting on the battlefield inflects that they will never be the same again. One of the men' knees "cannot bend" and his leg "dropped straight from the knee to the ankle without a calf" and another with his hand like a little baby's. The devastating injuries due to the war changed these soldiers' lives forever. Before the war, they had a normal life; the boy with the injured leg loved playing football, other was the greatest fencer in Italy. From now on, their hobbies are really gone forever although all efforts to help them rejuvenate to do. And the boy who lost his nose will never be looked as a normal person again. The war is so horrible with its devastation not only on the physical but also the motional.
In this case, Hemingway uses realistic events and characters to better convey Krebs' state of mind. Leading up to the climax of tension between Krebs' family members and himself, the author states, "Nothing was changed in the town except that the young girls has grown up. But they lived in such a complicated world of already defined alliances and shifting feuds that Krebs did not feel the energy or courage to break into it." The girls that Krebs grew up with have changed in several ways whereas Krebs is still stuck in the past. This is why he feels the need to lie - to impress the girls who used to impress him. During the climax of the story, Krebs' mother poses a question that he answers truthfully, "...'Don't you love your mother dear boy?' 'No.' Krebs said. His mother looked at him across the table. Her eyes were shiny. She started crying." This profound moment represents the true climax in "Soldier's Home". Krebs' silence to his mother shows the readers that he truly still is in pain; the war and the lying causes him to feel such disgust in everything that is presented to him. Hemingway introduces the resolution of the story as he says, "He would go to Kansas and get a job...he wanted his life to go smoothly...he would go over to the schoolyard and watch Helen play indoor baseball." This is Krebs' way of trying to put his life back together and to move past the war-stricken battles he has been