Soldier’s Home
Change is something that everyone will experience when going through life but sometimes events change you for the worse and your identity as you knew it is gone. Learning to establish the identity you desire is identity is something everyone should do. In the short story “Soldier 's home” written by Ernest Hemingway in 1925, Krebs a soldier in war has just returned home but his identity has changed and nothing feels the same anymore so he has to figure out what to do with himself.
The short story “Soldier 's home” is about Krebs who goes to war but afterwards when it is over he feels that everyone has expectations of him so he lies about how the war was and feels guilty about it. Furthermore Krebs has a desire to look
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Krebs the main character has a hard time adapting to society and a lot about him has changed. The military has learned him to not love anyone and he feels that doing anything that potentially has consequences is not worth the risk and that includes social interactions with girls which is demonstrated through the following quote. “When he was in town their appeal to him was not very strong. He did not like them when he saw them in the Greek 's ice cream parlour. He did not want them themselves really.” (P.3, line 34-36). The lost generation refers to the generation of young men who served in the first world war and that can be related to Krebs because he did serve in the war. Wandering without direction or goal is something that happens a lot to the lost generation and this most definitely is also an issue Krebs is dealing with himself. The feeling of being lost and not a part of society also stems from the military teaching Krebs that he should not love anyone not even his mother. “ 'Yes, Don 't you love your mother, dear boy? ' 'No, ' said Krebs.“ (p.8, line 5-6. Ernest Hemingway). The quote shows how the war and military has taught Krebs to not believe in love but in the society he currently lives in love is very crucial and therefore he feels lost
The Dark side of War What is it felt like to be a veteran who has suffered from the trauma of war that leaves multiple scars? As a Vietnam War veteran, Yusef Komunyaka in his short poem “Facing It” narrates his experience along with his emotional struggle as he visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Phil Klay, who is also a veteran served in Iraq, in his short story “Redeployment”, attempted to show how it feels like in a war zone and what happened to the soldiers who returned. These stories gives a peek into one of the most difficult phases a person can face in a life time. The sequencing of the collection reflects the disorder of a soldier’s life.
Like what you ate for breakfast and who ranked up you think what soldiers go through nowadays and why they act so different when they come back because of how much war changes you. This depiction of war that the writer Walter Dean Myers shows us everything these soldiers go through and how it changes a man you could be a nonviolent man and never believe in god but once you're thrown in war your whole life will be
In Tobias Wolff’s Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories, lies a gem in the rough called “Soldier’s Joy,” which is a short story about a Vietnam War veteran named Hooper who is adapting to life on the base post-war. Hooper is trying to get his life together little by little, but nothing is going back together the way it should in his mind. This was a problem for a lot of Vietnam War veterans post-war because of all the things they saw firsthand and they had no idea how to handle the things they saw on their own. They had no idea how to handle all of the destruction, chaos, and death they saw, so most of them took to their own ways of coping with everything they saw or even did during the war.
In Ernest Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home,” Harold Krebs is a returning soldier from World War I that receives no praise. Hemingway uses conflict and setting to develop Krebs as a depressed character who wants to avoid lying about feelings. Hemingway uses the setting of “Soldier’s Home” to influence the character of Krebs. The story takes place post-World War I, “He enlisted in the Marines and did not return to the United States until… 1919”
In Soldier from the War Returning, Thomas Childers writes that “a curious silence lingers over what for many was the last great battle of the war.” This final battle was the soldier’s return home. After World War II, veterans came back to the United States and struggled with stigmatized mental illnesses as well as financial and social issues. During the war, many soldiers struggled with mental health issues that persisted after they came home.
The Unbeatable Souls The Lost Battalion is based totally on a real story of an American battalion that was sent out to battle during the World War I. Major Charles Whittlesey, a New York lawyer, who ends up in the trenches of France having under his command mostly young, unexperienced men. When Whittlesey and his battalion of five hundred men are ordered to advance into the Argonne Forest they find themselves surrounded by Germans troops when the other battalions instantly withdrew, leaving Whittlesey’s battalion on his own. Confined behind enemy lines, Whittlesey’s battalion turned into the only force in the German army’s plans to move forward. Trapped and with no other way to rescue, Whittlesey is given an opportunity to surrender, but chose to continue fighting and keep his men together.
Krebs feels loved by his family. “ He was still a hero to his two young sisters. His mother would have given him breakfast in bed if he had wanted it.” Even though Krebs isn’t welcomed into his town with open arms, and his stories aren't wanted, he was still loved and considered a hero by his family. Everyone in his family looks up to him and wants to hear his war
In the book, Soldier Boys, by Dean Hughes two boys who are on opposite sides of the war tell their struggles and stories of battle in the War and how their two different lives collide together. The author of the book, Dean Hughes, has spent 7 years doing research on World War II and finding information about the war. Dean Hughes has interviewed war veterans, studied newspapers that were written in the time of World War II, and read hundreds of books like, “The Burden of Hitler 's Legacy” by Alfons Hecks to help his understanding of this time period and events. With all this information and facts he collected, he wrote the book, Soldier Boys. The years that World War II took place was in between 1939 to 1945 and around those years the holocaust
A Young Soldier Is Tasked With Starting His New Life In the story “A Soldier 's home”, by Ernest Hemingway, a young man named Harold Krebs finds himself disconnected from society and unmotivated to fulfill the requirements set for American youth. Krebs struggle with continuing his religious belief becomes a problem. When Krebs was asked to pray with his mother, Krebs realizes his struggle with religious belief has become one of his challenges with returning home. Kreb is struggling to consider himself Christian.
In Phil Klay’s Redeployment, the war in Iraq is described as an intense masculine experience. Through the pages, the presence of women is marginal, if there is any woman in the short stories, and the reader enters in a realm of men and, more important, of what it means to be a real man. The assumption of war as a complete masculine experience might seem pretty obvious; however, Phil Klay is able to offer a crude and clear depiction of it. The author tells twelve different short stories of men who have only one thing in common: the experience of the Iraq War. But this is not simply a book about the war, but also about the consequences that this terrible experience has on the soldiers.
The car in ‘Soldiers Home” shows the change in Krebs by showing how he was before and after the war. Before the war he wanted to drive and be more active and have a life after he chose to be lazy and not be part of his life like wanting to drive. “Speaking of Courage” starts the book around the lake and is told throughout the the whole of the story. The lake symbolizes the past and how it revolves around in his life still and helps him reflect on the future and how he wants to keep moving in his
Although this short story is fiction, given O’Brien’s personal experience, it holds many truisms; one of which being the battle between what a man does and what a man feels he has to do. O’Brien’s use of characterization deconstructs what it means to be a man by exploring how events and situations dictate a soldier’s
The story “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemmingway depicts the wounding and post-traumatic experience of the First World War of the main character Harold Krebs and his family. Like most soldiers’ experience of the war, upon return to their lives back home, their lives virtually had no more meaning to them. Krebs presents a painful realization in this manner in which he interacts with his mother. She tries to think of her son as a hero and make him feel like one by encouraging him to re-tell his tales from the war. Krebs knows that the impressions his mother is making are not authentic and she, just like the rest of his fellow town folk are tired of hearing and reading the same stories from the war (De Baerdemaeker 24).
Krebs thought girls were “not worth the trouble.” (85) Although he may not have had the motivation to pick up the girls, he “liked looking at them.” (85) This is in no way the girls’ fault, however it shows how the war affected Krebs’ drive to do tasks that involve socialization. Perhaps if the townspeople were more open to listen to Krebs’ story then he would be more comfortable with girls. His mother is an example of how he interacts with women.
Soldiers train rigorously, preparing for the departure of war. They sacrifice all that they have to fight for their country. As they return after the war, they are left with painful experiences and traumatizing memories, suffering from their inevitable conditions. However, the spouse, families and children back at home are suffering even more than soldiers.