Changes in life can bring about an unnecessary pain that can affect our outlook on life and rearrange our ambitions. Whether it be caused by events or people, learning to put ourselves first, can lead us along a successful path of happiness. However, not observing the brighter sides of things may cause a severe damage in the end. In “Soldier’s Home” and “Jealous Husband,” pain and the act of not being able to let go are apparent. Witnessing two men, not being able to conform to their present, cause many problems in the end. Also, both holding their emotions inside, which hurt them more than anyone knew. These two short stories, illustrate the inability of letting go and the lack of communication that the main characters depict, leaving them with a negative outlook of the future. In “Soldier’s Home,” Hemingway shares the life of Krebs, a young soldier, who has trouble adjusting to life after the war. Due to everyone’s need to see the war in a certain light, he struggles to reveal to others his experiences. This leads him into a depression while his fellow war mates carry on with their lives. Hemingway states, “Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie, and after he had done this twice he, too, had a reaction against the war and against talking about it. A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of the lies he had told” (Hemingway, 365). Due to the absence of an outlet, Krebs finds it hard to really go back to the
Krebs “felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it. His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities.” Krebs own family lacks support for his yearning to talk to someone about what he has done and gone through. “She [Krebs’ mother] often came in when he was in bed and asked him to tell her about the war, but her attention always wandered. His father was non-committal.” It is obvious why Krebs decided to sleep all day and lock himself in his room, his town and his family have locked him in there with nothing but his thoughts. Krebs cannot leave the room because he is unable to let out all that he carries from the war.
Upon returning home the soldiers meet a field of new troubles that come with acclimation to society after fighting. Many soldiers come home with skills that are not applicable to their lives and generally a much deeper understanding of what they believe the world consists of. This leads to much disillusion with the world they come back to. In both Ernest Hemingway and Tim O’Brien’s stories, soldiers meet with disillusionment and disconnect from society. The soldiers react in different ways to this feeling; the authors use diction, sentence structure, and figurative language to demonstrate their troubles with acclimation.
Ernest Hemingway “Soldier’s Home" is an outstanding short story that shows the tragic impact of war on the life of a young soldier who returns home. The story paints a vibrant picture of a soldier’s life after coming back from a shocking experience. Hemingway shows impacts of war on a soldier with the main character being Harold Krebs, who faces hostility in his hometown after his return from fighting in the war. The main character in the story is Kreb with the author making usage of repetition, characterization, and symbolism to bring out the message in the story.
Women are taught from a young age that marriage is the end all be all in happiness, in the short story “The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin and the drama “Poof!” by Lynn Nottage, we learn that it is not always the case. Mrs. Mallard from “The Story of an Hour” and Loureen from “Poof!” are different characteristically, story-wise, and time-wise, but share a similar plight. Two women tied down to men whom they no longer love and a life they no longer feel is theirs. Unlike widows in happy marriages Loureen and Mrs., Mallard discover newfound freedom in their respective husband’s deaths. Both stories explore stereotypical housewives who serve their husbands with un-stereotypical reactions to their husband’s deaths.
In Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Soldier’s Home”, Krebs, a soldier, returns to his hometown from fighting in World War I. As indicated throughout the story, “home” for Krebs is not unlike the war front: confusing, complicated, and restless. Hemingway uses the setting in Kansas, during World War I, to convey Krebs post-war life in comparison to his pre-war.
A “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemmingway is an intriguing story about a man by the name of Krebs who enlists in the Marine Corps during his attendance at a Methodist college in Kansas. After serving for two years at the Rhine, he returned with the second division in 1919 but Krebs wasn’t in the same state of mind as before he left. The reason why Krebs was so distraught when he returned home was not because of the fact that no one wanted to listen to his war stories but because him and other soldiers were without any real benefits such as medical, education, extra remuneration, or anything to help him get back into the real world. This reason stated is the reason that Krebs and soldiers alike came home from war with nothing to show for
As a young man coming back from the war, Krebs expected things to be the same when he got home and they were, except one. Sure the town looked older and all the girls had matured into beautiful women, Krebs had never expected that he would be the one to change. The horrific experiences of the first World War had alienated and removed those he had cared about, including his family, who stood naïve to the realities and consequences only those who live it first hand would comprehend.
Numerous people all over the states join a military branch. Some are forced with war and others are not. Soldiers that have war experience might experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) when returning home. In the story of “Soldier Home”, Harold Krebs seems to have quite a few symptoms of this disorder. Prior to his war services, Krebs experiences conformity, connections, and his faith; however, after the war he has a difficult time adjusting back to civilian life.
In Soldier's Home, Ernest Hemingway paints a vivid picture of Harold Krebs return home from World War I and the issues he confronts while trying to shift his way back towards the ordinary life he once lived. After his battling over seas took place, it took Krebs over a year to finally leave Europe and make his way back home to his family in Oklahoma. After finally finding the drive to come home, Krebs found that it was difficult to express his feelings towards all he had seen during his tour of duty, which must be attributed to the fact that he was in the heart of some of the bloodiest and most crucial battles mankind has ever seen. Therefore, Krebs difficulty in acknowledging his past is because he was indeed a “good soldier” (133), whose
Soldier’s Home is a story about the experiences of a soldier returning from war. The narrative starts with a description of an image or photograph of Harold Krebs. Krebs is the main character of this story. He was a young man who was attending the Methodist College in Kansas before he had to enlist in the Marines to find in the war (Hemingway 111-116). The opening picture is an increasingly significant source of contrast between the young man who went to war and the one who comes back who has become silent and alienated after coming home. Krebs comes back in 1919 even though the war ended in 1918. His return is not marked by celebrations and parades that were often given to the young soldiers who had managed to come home early. Rather, Krebs finds out that the people are not overly excited about his news of the war unless he lies and exaggerates about his role during the war (Hemingway 111-116).
While the disconnection allows the soldier to adapt to the brutal war environment, it inhibits them from re-entering society. When he takes his leave, he is unable to feel comfortable at home. Even if Paul had survived the war physically, he most likely would not have integrated back into society suitably. The emotional disconnection inhibits soldiers from mourning their fallen friends and comrades. However, Paul was somewhat less than able to completely detach himself from his feelings, and there are several moments in the when he feels himself pulled down by emotion. These rush of feelings indicate the magnitude to which war has automated Paul to cut himself off from feeling, as when he says, with unbridled understatement, “Parting from my friend Albert Kropp was very hard. But a man gets used to that sort of thing in the army (p. 269) .”
Comparatively, Hemingway uses mental illness to depict the deteriorating modernist society. Hemingway reflects on his own experience with war and writes Harold Krebs in “Soldier’s Home” with clear signs of post traumatic stress disorder. Krebs presents a fearsome look into the reality of a soldier experiencing PTSD: “Krebs acquired the nausea in regard to experience that is the result of untruth or exaggeration, and when he occasionally met another man who had really been a soldier and they talked a few minutes in the dressing room at a dance he fell into the easy pose of the old soldier among other soldiers: that he had been badly, sickeningly
Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldiers Home” is about a young man named Krebs who is learning to adjust to society after his experience in Europe during World War I. Hemingway’s purpose for writing this story can be confusing and also very telling. I believe Krebs was not a soldier at all and in fact, deceives his family, his friends, and his community into believing he was an experienced soldier in World War I. At first glance, Krebs may be seen as a war hero. However, by observing the characteristics such as Kreb’s background, actions, motivation, and the author’s Implied Evaluation, we see that he is not a war hero at all.
In a sense, he loses his role but tries to find it by telling stories about the war. However, the role of a soldier in his hometown is no longer “sensational” and he lies in order to find the pattern of soldier. Still nobody listens to Krebs’ pattern and he begins to search out the role through war books finding it “interesting reading”. It seems that Krebs tries to find another pattern to replace this new complicated life of a former soldier.
A lot of Hemingway’s writings were based off things he experienced in real life. It is evident A Soldiers Home withheld deeper meaning and portrayed some of Hemingway’s feelings. Within the short story, Krebs has no interest in trying to heal from the mental pains of war. His parents even offer to him the family car to go out and meet people and get a job.Viewing Hemingway’s life, times can be found, postwar where he simply drank to get drunk. This was in an effort to isolate himself, and to get away from his feeling of “nothingness.” Krebs, similarly isolated himself in the story. An example being him turning down the offer of driving the family car.Hemingway was trying to avoid the war and his life after war, just as Krebs was avoiding events