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Hemingway Soldiers Home Analysis

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Wars and armed conflicts have a great impact on both the physical and mental health of soldiers. Armed conflicts have maimed thousands of soldiers and claimed the lives of many. Surviving soldiers have had to live a life of distress and mental torture resulting from post traumatic stress they suffer on their return to their country. Ernest Hemingway through fictional characters has shared the struggles of attempting to cope and re-adjust to life after fighting in a battle. His post-war civilian experience, his coping ability and life after war shows that it is not always easy for a soldier to cope with the civilian life after war. The society is less concerned with what happens to the surviving soldiers and much attention is drawn to the …show more content…

Carl Eby specifically appreciates that “Soldiers Home” is “traditionally understood as a story about post traumatic stress disorder…and that Krebs is thought to bring out “post-war psychiatric trauma…” (Eby 147-148).Mathew Stewart also supports this position (Cohen 164).He says that the protagonist “Harold Krebs is subject to a more figurative, but nonetheless ,real, disease…Exactly what happened to Krebs in the war is not clear…but something in his experience has depressed him” (Stewart 60-61). The works of Hemmingway therefore espouse on the suffering and challenges of surviving soldiers upon their return …show more content…

This entails assimilating the veterans back to the society while appreciating their suffering which is not only physical but also mental. Reference to soldiers home is differently understood .In the aftermath of the American Civil War, the Americans understood it to mean a home for wounded veterans or a refuge for indigent former soldiers (Trout 6).Attempts such as the building of the soldiers and heroes home by General Ulysses to put up shelter for disabled veterans of Philadelphia (Severo 133) were inspired by the recognition of the special needs of such veterans. The question that begs is therefore whether the country appreciates its role in helping veterans recover from post traumatic stress disorder. What factors contribute to the recovery process of such

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