Compare and Contrast “Soldier’s Home” and “How to Tell a True War Story”
War can be defined as an ongoing armed conflict between different nations or states. Over the years there have been multiple authors who have written war stories and their effects on individuals. The protagonists in both stories are soldiers of war but they fought in different wars. Tim O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story and Soldier’s Home written by Ernest Hemingway are both stories that illustrate the effect war can have on just your average person. O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story is set during the Vietnam War as his narrator is on tour there, while Hemmingway’s Soldier’s Home is during post World War 1 in Oklahoma. Although these two stories might defer in means of the setting, however they do not differ far from the similar irony, the impact war has on the …show more content…
The guy just doesn’t seem like he has any feelings or any motivation. What Krebs’ eyes have seen, what he did, and what he didn’t do in the war is unknown, but you can see the psychological effects it had on him and how he perceived life after war.
The narrator’s perspective on war had some interesting similarities as well. In Soldier’s Home when Krebs comes back home and has lied so much that he is disgusted by it. It’s mentioned in Bedford, “Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie..” (Hemmingway 187). O’Brien backs this up in How to Tell a True War Story when he explains that to stretch the truth or to lie it will make someone believe your war story. Krebs illustrates his feelings why he was overseas:
All of the times that had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside himself when he thought of them; the times so long when he had done the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else, now lost their cool, valuable quality and then were lost themselves.
War can be defined as an ongoing armed conflict between different nations or states. Over the years there have been multiple authors who have written war stories and their effects on individuals. The protagonists in both stories are soldiers of war but they fought in different wars. Tim O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story and Soldier’s Home written by Ernest Hemingway are both stories that illustrate the effect war can have on just your average person. O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story is set during the Vietnam War as his narrator is on tour there, while Hemmingway’s Soldier’s Home is during post World War 1 in Oklahoma. Although these two stories might defer in means of the setting, however they do not differ far from the similar irony, the impact war has on the …show more content…
The guy just doesn’t seem like he has any feelings or any motivation. What Krebs’ eyes have seen, what he did, and what he didn’t do in the war is unknown, but you can see the psychological effects it had on him and how he perceived life after war.
The narrator’s perspective on war had some interesting similarities as well. In Soldier’s Home when Krebs comes back home and has lied so much that he is disgusted by it. It’s mentioned in Bedford, “Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie..” (Hemmingway 187). O’Brien backs this up in How to Tell a True War Story when he explains that to stretch the truth or to lie it will make someone believe your war story. Krebs illustrates his feelings why he was overseas:
All of the times that had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside himself when he thought of them; the times so long when he had done the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else, now lost their cool, valuable quality and then were lost themselves.