“Soldier’s Home” The story, “Soldier’s Home,” is an appropriately titled story, that explains the trials and tribulations of a soldier that had been to war and is now returning home. Throughout the story, the main character, Harold, is struggling significantly to re-adapt his lifestyle from what he was before leaving for the war, and what he is as he returns from the war. Harold repeatedly compares the lifestyle of people in his society, in America, to the lifestyles of people in Germany and France. The complications that Harold struggles with every day, are the same struggles that soldiers returning from the war still face today. There are soldiers returning home from the war every day, much like Harold, that are expected, by society, …show more content…
It is shown whenever Harold’s mother asks him if he loves her. Cold heartedly, Harold replies no and that he cannot love anything anymore. Once seeing that it had broken his mother’s heart, Harold lies to her and says he does love her he was just aggravated at something else and had taken it out on her. Harold’s mother also asks Harold to pray, in which Harold replied that he could not pray and wanted his mother to pray for him. It is clear during the entirety of the story that Harold is struggling with …show more content…
Harold felt as certain sense of solidarity, anger, and languishment once he returned home from the war. Harold became irritated, and somewhat belligerent, when he conversed with his mother. Harold felt the need to lie to everyone in his hometown about what the war was really like. While Harold enjoyed watching the women walk down the street in his hometown, he continuously reminisced on the women that had been in Germany, and how being in the military had taught him how he did not need to be with a woman. All of these actions, by Harold, are a significant indication that Harold was actually suffering from post-traumatic stress
Today’s veterans often come home to find that although they are willing to die for their country, they’re not sure how to live for it. It’s hard to know how to live for a country that regularity tears itself apart along every possible ethnic and demographic boundary… In combat, soldiers all but ignore differences of race, religion,and politics within their platoon. It’s no wonder they get so depressed when they come home. (Junger
Guy Sajer’s The Forgotten Soldier is a work notable not only for its vivid and uncompromising account of his experience as a member of the Wehrmacht in World War II, but also for its subtle and incisive commentary about the very nature of war itself. What is perhaps most intriguing about Sajer’s novel is his treatment of the supposedly “universal” virtues present within war such as professionalism, patriotism, camaraderie, and self-sacrifice. Sajer introduces a break between how war is thought about in the abstract and how it has actually been conducted historically.
In Hemingway’s short story “Soldier’s Home”, Hemingway introduces us to a young American soldier, that had just arrived home from World War I. Harold Krebs, our main character, did not receive a warm welcome after his arrival, due to coming home a few years later than most soldiers. After arriving home, it becomes clear that World War I has deeply impacted the young man, Krebs is not the same man that headed off to the war. The war had stripped the young man of his coping mechanism, female companionship, and the ability to achieve the typical American life.
In his book, My Fellow Soldiers, Andrew Carroll tells the story of World War I through the eyes of the American participants. He uses quotes, personal letters and diaries, from an array of characters, to depict a day in the life of a WWI warrior. Though, he narrows his focus on the untold story of General John J. Pershing, a US army leader. He uniquely talks about the General's vulnerable and emotional side. "Pershing was notoriously strong-willed, to the point of seeming cold, rigid, and humorless, almost more machine than man" (p.XVIII). Pershing is commonly recognized for his accomplishments during the war and remembered for his sternness. He was "…especially unforgiving when it came to matters of discipline" (p. XVIII). Nicknamed "Black Jack" due to his mercilessness towards his soldiers, in this book, Pershing is portrayed as a General with much determination and devotion to his troops, family, and close friends.
In my book, Ghost Soldiers, 121 soldiers were volunteers to attempt to rescue 513 allied prisoners of a war in a Japanese camp. These prisoners were tortured quite often for three years. They faced starvation, abuse from Japanese guards, and diseases from the tropical region. The story is about the prisoners, the unit performing the raid, and the Filipino who assisted them along the way. A large group of American soldiers at Palawan told U.S. commanders to the danger of mass POW, prisoners of war, executions as the retreated from the Philippines. As a result the went with a mission to rescue the POWs from the prison camp. The book tells you about events that lead up to the raid: the camp conditions, how strong the will of the prisoners were
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.
During the Vietnam War the reality of warfare brought many soldiers back to a home that didn't want them. Their feelings torn by atrocities, the loss of friends, and the condition of loneliness only made the experience worse. Did the issues on the home front affect the issues on the frontline? The novel Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers is a perfect example of the conflict and diversity among other soldiers during the Vietnam War. It shows the reality many soldiers faced and how they dealt with conflicts back home while they were alone and afraid of death creeping up on them. With the reality of war taking its toll, soldiers coming home to a world they didn't know, a world that had changed and left them in Vietnam to fend for themselves. They slept with wives who didn't know even the smallest of their problems. From nightmares to remembering bad memories, Vietnam veterans suffered it all from extreme depression to the worst, suicide. The real world didn't know how to deal with them and just left them alone. The U.S. they left had changed on them. From people to the ways of life everything had changed and they didn't know how to deal with it.
...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.
Many people question if Guy Sajer, author of The Forgotten Soldier, is an actual person or only a fictitious character. In fact, Guy Sajer in not a nom de plume. He was born as Guy Monminoux in Paris on 13 January 1927. At the ripe young age of 16, while living in Alsace, he joined the German army. Hoping to conceal his French descent, Guy enlisted under his mother's maiden name-Sajer. After the war Guy returned to France where he became a well known cartoonist, publishing comic books on World War II under the pen name Dimitri.
a lot of thing have changed since they have left their homes to go to war. in "All Quiet on the Western Front", Remarque explain how many of the soldiers feel when they return home when he said, " Indeed, it was different a year ago. It is I of course that have changed in the interval. There lies a gulf between that time and today. At that time I still knew nothing about the war, we had been only in quiet sectors." He continued, "But now I see that I have been crushed without knowing it. I find I do not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world" (Remarque, 168). the lives of these soldiers have changed and it will never go back the same way that they have before they go to
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
In the short story A Soldier’s Home, the conflict the main character Krebs is facing results from him returning home from World War I, in which he fights in five different battles. Krebs returns to his small town in Oklahoma after serving in the Army for two years, he does not get a welcome home parade or a thank you for his service. He is having a hard time readjusting to his “normal” life, family, and childhood home due to how much war has changed him. Krebs is also experiencing an inability to love, in the
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.