Jon Hemingway's, "A Soldier's Home", is a critique of our culture and it's views on war.
             Our culture views war as something heroic, some might even believe it is glamorous. This is completely opposite to the reality of war, which is in-fact horrifying and life altering. Hemingway flawlessly conveys our culture and it's views towards war throughout this piece of literature.
             The main character, Krebs, is a returning World War I veteran trying to fit back into the normal routine of small-town life. World War I's reality weighs heavy upon him as his townsfolk expect more from more is the reality that he cannot live up to his own experiences and perceptions.
             The difference between perceived 'manly' attitudes toward war and its effects versus the reality of war sapping the very life from its participants. In our day we call what Krebs was going through psychologically, post-traumatic stress syndrome.
             In Krebs day, through the pen of Hemingway, we find him conveying his feelings of frustration and shame upon returning home to a town and to parents who still had a romantic notion of war and who didn't understand the psychological impact the war had had on him. They would never be able to comprehend what war was all about. The character of Krebs obviously represents Hemingway. Hemingway had been in World War I and the Spanish Civil War. Vicariously, through Krebs, he expresses the fact that returning veterans were often faced with ambiguity, falsehood and propaganda surrounding their experience.
             Hemingway establishes that by writing, "People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the wars was over" (153). Hemingway to me is expressing how difficult a situation that would be for someone who happens to still be quite young, having been scarred by the horrors of war, who probably at some points longed for peace at home and the ac...