Outline For Soldier's Home By Ernest Hemingway

Krebs also withdraws into his room because of the consequence that returning from war has left him and Berlin feeling lost, insecure, and out of place. Krebs “would have liked to have a girl but he did not want to have to spend a long time getting her.” In the army, Krebs got German and French girls without many complications because you couldn’t talk much with them, nor did you need to talk. It was much simpler, and now that Krebs is back, he is scared to jump into his society for a girl. It is evident that the war has taken away the transitional period from dependency to independency from his parents. He joined while he was still a boy and now that he has returned he is expected to move on and get a job and girl, “Charley Simmons, who is just your age, has a good job and is going to be married.” Like

Hemingway has made use of the book as a symbol of war to stress the soldier’s inability to lead a normal life (McKenna and Raabe 210). The symbol is used in the context of many other elements that convey Krebs’ distance from his own life. The book about war is a literary symbol that Hemingway employs in a specific context.

Ernest Hemingway graduated from high school in 1917 and moved to Chicago to take a position at the Kansas City Star. Shortly after that, he enlisted in the war and went to Italy as a Red Cross ambulance driver. During his stay at the Italian front, he was seriously wounded while assisting a soldier and spent several weeks in a Milan hospital (Mazzeno). One can argue that Hemingway used his time spent in war as a way to transfer his own feeling and personal experiences in writing “Soldier’s Home.”

Throughout the short story “Soldier's Home”, Hemingway’s use of short syntax and repetitive diction conveys how when a soldier returns from war they often feel detached from the people and things around them. Krebs has returned from World War one, but later than everyone else, so they don’t seem to care for his stories, even when he lies. Before the war, Krebs wanted to drive the family car, but he was never allowed to. Now that he has returned from war, “it was still the same car” from when he left (Hemingway). Using short sentences, Hemingway demonstrates how after witnessing the intensity of war, the issues that used to be a big deal to Krebs are no longer of importance and he feels detached from the car. While walking through the town,

The summer of 1919 is a difficult time for Krebs to accept because although the town has moved on from the war, he wishes to hold on to what he believes, is still the present. Hemingway uses the setting to bring the reader a clear understanding that war was a strong impact on soldiers who had been participants of it. The setting reveals the big picture; nothing is over until’ you let it go. Hemingway portrays the soldier’s hometown to be very similar to the war, in the perspective that his hometown is very confusing, complicated, and restless. The title “A Soldier’s Home” brings irony to the setting in the sense that

Imagine coming back home after being away for three years and trying to adapt to a new environment. It's almost like not being able to sleep in a hotel bed because you are used to your one at home. For Krebs’ it is the other way around. In the short story “Soldier's Home” by author Ernest Hemingway, Harold Krebs the main character is having trouble getting used to his hometown and the life it follows.. He has been at war for several years and is trying to get used to his home. Krebs joined the marines and went to war in 1917 and came back to the United States in 1919. The war ended in 1918 and two other kids from his town came back a year earlier than him. Because of this no one one wanted to hear any war stories and it was hard for Krebs. One of the most important themes that is represented throughout the story is adaptation. Krebs has to adapt to his home back in Oklahoma after fighting in the war for years. In the course of the short story, “Soldier’s Home”, Ernest Hemingway uses literary elements of setting and conflict to represent one of the themes, adaptation.

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.

He needed to be heard by the others in his town, but “His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities” (Hemingway 133) that they did not want to listen to Krebs stories. The community did not care what Krebs was thinking in his mind, or how he was feeling. Krebs had no choice but to tell small lies about the war because the community could not capture what actually happened during the war. Krebs stories would have too much information that the people were unprepared to listen or know about. Perhaps he did not want to discuss the war with others because he felt guilty of all the massacres he has witness in the

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

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

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 the story, “Soldier’s Home” it is told from the third person narrator point of view. Hemingway, having been a former journalist is able to show how distant Krebs is because of being the type of journalist who is detached just like Krebs was detached by his experience in World War I. As Hemingway writes he shows how Krebs holds his emotions in that he knows his mother will not understand. When Krebs calls his mom “Mummy” he is trying to comfort her by acting like a child. At the end Krebs makes a decision to leave and go to Kansas City because he feels he may not ever reconnect with his family.

He was highly interested in the book even though he had just come from an actually war. “He looked forward with a good feeling to reading all the really good histories when they would come out with good detail maps. Now he was really learning about the war” (3). This shows that Krebs is still in touch with his war life and he even wished to stayed in Germany rather than coming home. “On the whole he had liked Germany better. He did not want to leave Germany. He did not want to come home. Still, he had come home. He sat on the front porch” (3).

To begin with, since the beginning of the short story the reader is able to note that Krebs is a soldier who is severely impacted by the war. Short sentences allow Hemingway to demonstrate the isolation that Krebs feels once he returns home. This use of abrupt sentence structure not only shows Krebs detachment, but it also signals to the reader that fighting in the war has emotionally deteriorated Krebs. To clarify the reason for Krebs behavior, the narrator mentions, “By the time Krebs returned to his home town in Oklahoma the greeting of heroes was over. He came back much too late” (Bedford 116). This not only gives background information on Krebs but it reveals to the reader that Krebs did not receive the welcome he expects. He returns home with the hopes of feeling like he belongs, but he is incapable of establishing connections or even feeling

In Soldier’s Home, Ernest Hemingway depicts Harold Krebs return home from World War I and the problems he faces when dealing with his homecoming and transition back towards a normal life. After the fighting overseas commenced, it took Krebs a year to finally leave Europe and return to his family in Oklahoma. Once home, he found it hard to talk about all he had seen in his tour of duty overseas, which should be attributed to the fact that he saw action in some of the bloodiest, most crucial battles towards the culmination of the war. Therefore, Krebs difficulty in acknowledging his past is because he was indeed a “good soldier” (139), whose efforts in order to survive “The Great War,” were not