a soldiers home
SOLDIER’S HOME
In the short story called SOLDIER’S HOME, by Nobel Prize winning author Ernest
Hemingway, the main character Krebs has just returned from World War One in Europe. This is the perennial story of the hero leaving on some quest, only to return home finding everything different. Therefore, identity conflict holds the key to this story. Hemingway shows us how the hero must move on as there apparently is no such thing as a soldier’s home.
Harold Krebs returns from World War I having lost everything. His home town immediately impresses its demand for conformity upon Harold's arrival. The people of the town find it odd that he should return so much later than the other men, which begins to show the conflict between Harold and the views of the local community. Hemingway paints a dark picture of how society demands that all participants fall in line with mainstream ideals. Why should Harold be so late in returning home? Why could he not be like the other men, and arrive with them? It is as if they believe he is out to make trouble. It lends to the idea that Hemingway himself was an outsider, and that he saw himself as an interloper in his rural home town. Krebs arrives home too late for the heroes welcome, and instead finds a society interested only in lies not the realities of war. These lies are acceptable, because they allow Krebs to fit neatly into society's expectations of him and others.
In a so called love-thy-neighbor, Christian, all-American environment there is no room for an individual like Krebs.
As a matter of fact, many people have the opinion of America as a free country where there is room for versatility. However, I believe the fewest are aware of how our hidden double standards affect the society we live in, in America or any other country in the world.
The story takes place in an all-American Methodist community in Kansas.
Hemingway might be accentuating the importance of religion in the Methodist community, by
using
In the short story called SOLDIER’S HOME, by Nobel Prize winning author Ernest
Hemingway, the main character Krebs has just returned from World War One in Europe. This is the perennial story of the hero leaving on some quest, only to return home finding everything different. Therefore, identity conflict holds the key to this story. Hemingway shows us how the hero must move on as there apparently is no such thing as a soldier’s home.
Harold Krebs returns from World War I having lost everything. His home town immediately impresses its demand for conformity upon Harold's arrival. The people of the town find it odd that he should return so much later than the other men, which begins to show the conflict between Harold and the views of the local community. Hemingway paints a dark picture of how society demands that all participants fall in line with mainstream ideals. Why should Harold be so late in returning home? Why could he not be like the other men, and arrive with them? It is as if they believe he is out to make trouble. It lends to the idea that Hemingway himself was an outsider, and that he saw himself as an interloper in his rural home town. Krebs arrives home too late for the heroes welcome, and instead finds a society interested only in lies not the realities of war. These lies are acceptable, because they allow Krebs to fit neatly into society's expectations of him and others.
In a so called love-thy-neighbor, Christian, all-American environment there is no room for an individual like Krebs.
As a matter of fact, many people have the opinion of America as a free country where there is room for versatility. However, I believe the fewest are aware of how our hidden double standards affect the society we live in, in America or any other country in the world.
The story takes place in an all-American Methodist community in Kansas.
Hemingway might be accentuating the importance of religion in the Methodist community, by
using