Ernest Hemingway

Research Project on Ernest Hemingway’s Soldier’s Home
Biographical Information Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois to Dr. Clarence Edmonds and Grace Hemingway. Ernest was the second of six children and was raised in a quiet suburban home by devout Christian parents. Upon graduation from high school in 1917, He started his writing career as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. Six months later he joined a volunteer American Red Cross ambulance unit in Italy during World War I and was seriously wounded on July 8, 1918 on the Italian front near Fossalta di Piave. After the war ended Hemingway resumed work as a journalist in Chicago for a short period of time and married Hadley Richardson in 1921. In 1921 he moved to Paris and wrote for the Toronto Star as a foreign correspondent. In 1923 his first son, John, was born. In the late 1920s Hemingway published a lot of different stories, including The Torrents of Spring and The Sun Also Rises. In 1927 he divorced Hadley Richardson and married Pauline Pfieffer, a writer for Vogue. In 1929 they moved to Key West where his final two sons, Patrick and Gregory were born in 1929 and 1932. In 1928 drawing off his experiences during World War I Hemingway’s story A Farwell to Arms was published, however during the year he was devastated due to the lost his father who committed suicide. Hemingway was able to draw on many of his personal experiences in his writings. In 1937 he went to Spain as a war correspondent. Three years later in 1940 divorced Pauline Pfieffer and married Martha Gelhorn. During World War II, he served with the U. S Navy. Shortly after the end of the second world war in 1945, Hemingway divorced again and married Mary Welch. In 1947 Hemingway was awarded the Bronze Star for his bravery during World War II. In 1953 he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Hemingway died on July 2, 1961 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, , and was buried in Ketchum.
"Ernest Hemingway - Biography". Nobelprize.org. 20 Apr 2011
<http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-bio.html>.
Biography of Ernest Hemingway | List of Works, Study Guides & Essays*. GradeSaver, 20 April 2011 Web. 20 April 2011.
Summary
The short story “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway is a story about a marine who is returning home from war in the summer of 1919. By the time that Harold Krebs returned to Oklahoma from the war, all of the people in his town were over greeting soldiers because the war had ended years previous to his return. When he spoke about the war, he told lies of things that other men had seen, done or heard, therefore no one wanted to listen to his war stories. By the time summer was ending, he had got himself into a routine that was not productive. He enjoyed sit out on the porch and look at all of the attractive young girls who walked across the street past his house. He often thought about wanting a girl, “but it was not worth it” to him. One morning his mother woke him up early and wanted to talk to him downstairs. In order to get him out of bed and downstairs to talk with her, she informs him that his father wants him to take the car out in the evenings. While his mother was cooking breakfast, he and one of his younger sisters, Helen, have a conversation about him coming to watch her play indoor baseball at her school. As his mother serves breakfast and she begins talking to him about getting a job and how he needed to start socializing with girls in order to enjoy himself. She also informs him that his father wanted him to stop by his office to see him. By the end of the conversation he ended up making his mother cry saying that he did not love her, however to stop her crying he told her that he did love. His mother asked him to pray with her, saying the prayer for both of them. To satisfy his parents, he then planned on going to Kansas City to find a job and decided not to go by his father’s office because “he wanted his life to go smoothly” (5), so he decided to go to watch Helen play indoor baseball instead.
Richards, K. “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway. 15 April 2011 Web. 15 April 2011 <http://www.mrsrichards.com/handouts/Juniors/soldier.pdf>.
Critique/Reaction
Before Krebs went to war, he was going to a Methodist college in Kansas and was in a fraternity. He was filled with his youth and when he returned from the war he was a changed man. This story shows how a young man was changed from going to war, which is a reflection of the author’s own life and his war experiences. Throughout the story Krebs struggles with his emotions. When he returns to his home town, everything is the same as it was before, except for him. With the changes in him, he has to try to adapt and try to make some changes in his life, but does not have the will to. Krebs feels isolated from the town due to returning so long after the war had ended. Additionally, he feels like unimportant due to no one greeted him upon his return from the war. In order to gain attention and praise from the community, Krebs tells lies further resulting in him feeling further isolated from the town people. Due to all of this, he has no care in the world appearing lost and confused. Unable to leave the tragic events from the war behind him, the readers are able to see Krebs slow deterioration. He wants a relationship with a girl, however he does not want all responsibilities and consequences that come along with one. This example illustrates a conflict within him for not wanting to change to try for a relationship that he wants. Finally, Krebs does not have love for anything or anyone, including his mother, which shows how little he cares for himself. If a person does not love themselves, then they cannot love anyone else. I personally cannot relate to this story, however I liked it due to this story provides a small insight on how going to war can really change a person and how a society treats the veterans who risked their lives to protect our country.

Article One de Baerdemaeker, Ruben. "PERFORMATIVE PATTERNS IN HEMINGWAY 'S "SOLDIER 'S HOME." Hemingway Review 27.1 (2007): 55-73. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 8 Mar. 2011.
In Ruben de Baerdemaeker’s “Performative Patterns In Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” analysis, he starts off writing about the pattern pictures that are mentioned in the beginning of the story and how they set the characterization for Harold Krebs. The pictures are mentioned at the beginning of this story because they show “how Krebs becomes an outsider to what once was his life, and how his tragedy is brought about by the conflicting social norms that govern his behavior” (56). Ruben talks about how there are many patterns in this story that are used to analyze the way Harold Krebs attempts to live his life.
He also writes about the lies that Krebs tells about the war and how the pattern of him moving from college, to war, back to the pattern of home which shows how he has lost his talent for uniformity. Krebs feels like he needed to lie about his stories during the war because no one will listen to him. His parents are not interested because when his mother asks him to tell her a story, but her mind wanders off and his father is not even around throughout the story, he is always working. Krebs is losing whatever positive experiences that he had during the war due to all of the lies that he has made up about it.
Ruben also writes about the patterns that Krebs falls into when he speaks about the girls in the story that he likes to watch walking down the street. It becomes a pattern when Krebs sits and observes from the outside. It is possible to distinguish social occurrence as structure when he only remains on the outside of society. “Krebs, rather than studying himself, is not “at one” with the norms he inhabits and is therefore able to study those norms as an uninvolved spectator” (61).

Article Two
COHEN, MILTON A. "VAGUENESS AND AMBIGUITY IN HEMINGWAY 'S "SOLDIER 'S HOME": TWO PUZZLING PASSAGES." Hemingway Review 30.1 (2010): 158-164. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 8 Mar. 2011. In Milton Cohen’s “Vagueness and Ambiguity in Hemingway’s ‘Soldier’s Home’” analysis, he writes about the parts of the story being vague, which is not typically seen in any of Ernest Hemingway’s writings. When Krebs is talking about the distaste that he has for everything that happened to him in the war, he states “things” multiple times, which eliminates the specifics of what really happened to him while he was at war. “We can, of course, fill in the implied meanings, but to do so we must make an educated guess” (159). When an author is so vague and uses the word “thing” to describe something or a situation, there are many different interpretations that the reader can have. Milton also writes about the ambiguity in this story that is shown when the word “heroes” is used at the beginning of the story when Krebs is talking about how his town greeting the people who returned home from the war before he did. This sets the tone for the lies that Krebs tells throughout the story about his experience while he was at war. “If the townspeople (and especially returning draftees) have so debased the truth of combat in their exaggerations and lies, wouldn’t Krebs risk doing the same, debasing the coin still more, in giving vivid language to his behavior” (161)? Perhaps Krebs thought that since the “heroes” who had come back from war were drafted and had not volunteered, the word “heroes” that is used to describe them is ironic, which justified the lies that Krebs had told about his war experiences.

Article Three
Trout, Steven. " 'WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? ': ERNEST HEMINGWAY 'S 'SOLDIER 'S HOME ' and AMERICAN VETERANS OF WORLD WAR I." Hemingway Review 20.1 (2000): 5. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 8 Mar. 2011. In Steven Trout’s “‘Where Do We Go From Here?’: Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Soldier’s Home’ and American Veterans of World War I” analysis, he writes about the story depicting the post World War I American veterans’ issues instead of Ernest Hemingway’s personal experiences. The title of the story “establishes the issue of America’s responsibilities towards its former soldiers and, if interpreted ironically, implicitly charges the nation with failing to provide for its veterans all that the notion of “home” entails” (6). Trout believes that Hemingway used “Soldier’s” in title of the story as singular possessive instead of plural so the readers would think that it was a story of his own experience to avoid striking a nerve with his original audience by having them know that it was really a story about the mistreatment and misunderstanding of the American veterans. Throughout Trout’s analysis of this story, he writes provides a lot of statistics to show how American veterans’ return home was not welcomed properly and how the government failed to thank our soldiers by providing them with the means and the funds to return home. Trout also writes about Krebs return home and how he is pushed by his parents to return back to his prewar past and how unrealistic it is to understand how he was changed due to the war. “Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Krebs’s desire for their son to put the war behind him, a desire so intense that it prohibits any attempt to comprehend the former soldier’s point of view, had its parallel in real life” (12). He writes about how our society has idealistic beliefs that our American veterans can return to a “normal” life after their return from war. Trout believes that “ ‘Soldier’s Home’ demonstrates that a nation without a clear and honest picture of what its soldiers have endured will be incapable of understanding them when they return, and, therefore, will be incapable of insuring their successful reentry into civilian life” (13). Trout uses the detail in the part of Hemingway’s story where Krebs enjoys reading about the various battles that he had participated in, whereas his neighbors read the fantasies and folklore stories, to back up his point of how unrealistic it is for a soldier to return to a normal life after returning home from war.

BibliographyShort stories | Three Stories & Ten Poems. – Paris : Contact, 1923 | in our time. – Paris : Three Mountains Press, 1924 | In Our Time. – New York : Boni & Liveright, 1925 | Men Without Women. – New York : Scribners, 1927 | Winner Take Nothing. – New York : Scribner, 1933 | The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories. – New York : Scribners, 1938. – Republished as The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1954) | The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories. – New York : Scribner, 1961 | The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and Other Stories. – Penguin, 1963 | Hemingway 's African Stories : the Stories, Their Sources, Their Critics / compiled by John M. Howell. – Scribner, 1969. | The Nick Adams Stories / preface by Philip Young. – New York : Scribners, 1972 | The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. – New York : Scribners, 1987 | | Novels | The Torrents of Spring : a Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race. – New York : Scribners, 1926 | The Sun Also Rises. – New York : Scribners, 1926. – Republished as Fiesta (London: Cape, 1927) | A Farewell to Arms. – New York : Scribners, 1929 | To Have and Have Not. – New York : Scribners, 1937 | For Whom the Bell Tolls. – New York : Scribners, 1940 | Across the River and Into the Trees. – New York : Scribners, 1950 | The Old Man and the Sea. – New York : Scribners, 1952 | Islands in the Stream. – New York : Scribners, 1970 | The Garden of Eden. – New York : Scribner, 1986 | True at First Light : a Fictional Memoir / edited with an introduction by Patrick Hemingway. – New York : Simon & Schuster, 1999. – First unabridged version published as Under Kilimanjaro. – Kent State University Press (Kent, OH), 2005 | | Other | Today is Friday. – Englewood, N.J. : As Stable, 1926 | Death in the Afternoon. – New York : Scribner, 1932 | God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen. – New York : House of Books, 1933 | Green Hills of Africa. – New York : Scribner, 1935 | The Spanish Earth. – Cleveland : Savage, 1938 | The Secret Agent 's Badge of Courage. – Belmont Books, 1954 | Two Christmas Tales. – Hart Press, 1959. | A Moveable Feast. – New York : Scribners, 1964 | The Collected Poems of Ernest Hemingway. – New York : Haskell House, 1970 | Eighty-Eight Poems / edited by Nicholas Gerogiannis. – New York & London : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/ Bruccoli Clark, 1979. – Enlarged as Complete Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 1983) | Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters, 1917-1961, Scribner, 1981. | Complete Poems, edited by Nicholas Gerogiannis, University of Nebraska Press, 1983. | Hemingway on Writing / edited by Larry W. Phillips. – New York : Scribners, 1984 | The Dangerous Summer / introduction by James A. Michener. – New York : Scribner, 1985 | Conversations With Ernest Hemingway. – University Press of Mississippi , 1986. | Hemingway at Oak Park High : The High School Writings of Ernest Hemingway, 1916-1917. – Alpine Guild, 1993 | The Only Thing That Counts : The Ernest Hemingway/Maxwell Perkins Correspondence, 1925-1947 / edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli. – New York : Scribner, 1996 | | Critical studies (a selection) | Ernest Hemingway : the Man and His Work. – Cleveland : World Publ. Co., 1950 | Atkins, John, The Art of Ernest Hemingway : His Work and Personality. – London : Nevill, 1952 | Baker, Carlos Heard, Hemingway : the Writer As Artist. – Princeton : Princeton U.P., 1952 | Hemingway and His Critics : an International Anthology. – ed., with an introd. and a checklist of Hemingway criticism by Carlos Baker. – New York : Hill and Wang, 1961 | Hemingway, Leicester, My brother, Ernest Hemingway. – Cleveland : World Publ. Co., 1962 | Young, Philip, Ernest Hemingway : a Reconsideration. – University Park : Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1966 | Baker, Carlos Heard, Ernest Hemingway : a Life Story. – London : Charles Scribner 's son, 1969 | Hemingway, Mary Welsh, How it was. – New York : Knopf, 1976 | Hemingway : the Critical Heritage. – London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982 | Meyers, Jeffrey, Hemingway : a biography. – New York : Harper & Row, 1985 | Reynolds, Michael S., The Young Hemingway. – Oxford : Blackwell, 1986 | Reynolds, Michael S., Hemingway : the Paris years. – Oxford : Blackwell, 1986 | Reynolds, Michael S., Hemingway : the American Homecoming. – Oxford : Blackwell, 1992 | Reynolds, Michael S., Hemingway : the 1930s. – New York : W.W. Norton & Co, 1997 | Reynolds, Michael S., Hemingway : the Final Years. – New York : W.W. Norton & Co, 1999 |
"Ernest Hemingway - Bibliography". Nobelprize.org. 20 Apr 2011 <http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-bibl.html>.

"Ernest Hemingway." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260825/Ernest-Hemingway>.

Bibliography: . Nobelprize.org. 20 Apr 2011 &lt;http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-bibl.html&gt;. "Ernest Hemingway." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2011. &lt;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260825/Ernest-Hemingway&gt;.