ENG 102 – 007
Hatley
September 30, 2017.
Lost at Home
After World War I, being a soldier was the greatest level of honor any man could attain. Young men were shipped off to war with the promise of helping their country, defending the nation, and securing a future for themselves and their families. Little was said about the lasting psychological effects that war would have on soldiers. The life of isolation, and the inability to assimilate back into society, and the pressure to bounce back into civilian life was an everyday reality. This is the mutual reality that Krebs, the main character experiences in “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway. Initially reading the title, one would be led to believe its possessive, where it’s …show more content…
He has been changed and has experienced the horrors of war that no one else can understand. The town is over the hysteria of soldiers returning, have a glorified view of war and refuse to hear the truth. He comes home and finds his town unchanged by everything, whereas he has encountered a metamorphosis of self. Krebs finds himself caught in a conflict with the past and present, and doesn’t fit in anywhere. Krebs hides out at home when he realized that everything outside is complicated. He has grown up always telling the truth, but realizes that no one wants to hear the truth, but lying makes him sick. He is forced to lie in order to gain approval from anyone. He feels the need to talk about his experiences in the war, as a type of catharsis, but finds himself unable …show more content…
He would sleep in, get a book to read, eat lunch and read. Krebs does this in an attempt to find himself and where he would fit in in this town. Hemingway emulated his own experiences and struggle to fit back into life as he wrote about the character’s inability to jump back into society. Both of these interpretations of the title are being seen as untrue as Krebs is unable to be happy, or adjusted at home and in his community. While this is just a story, it is based on the author’s life experiences adjusting back to life after returning from World War I. It also shows the way society deals with soldiers coming back from war. Krebs was traumatized mentally and comes back to find no support or understanding on what he has gone through. “Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it. His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities” (Hemingway 111). His own family didn’t really take the time to try and understand either, His mother attempted a few times and failed; “She often came…and asked him to tell her about the war, but her attention always wandered. His father was non-committal” (Hemingway 112). He has no strength to block off what he has been through, and force himself to what the community wants him to be. It’s a conflict of a persons’ metamorphism, irrevocably changed from experiences at war,