A Soldier's Home
Within the first paragraph Hemingway establishes his main character Krebs as all American boy with religious values by writing, "Krebs went to the war from a Methodist college in Kansas" (152; all page references are from the same text, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 6th Ed.). This one sentence alone gives me an image quite distinct in me head setting the main character up for the point of the story, his return home from war. Krebs before the war seemed to me to be quite joyous with his present surroundings, such as his college buddies, "There is a picture which shows him amongst his fraternity brothers all of them wearing exactly the same height and style collar" (152). His character is that of a sense of belonging, involvement in activities that were of some importance to him, then h
and did not return to the United States until the second division returned from the Rhine in the summer of 1919" (152). However Krebs first attempts are futile unless changes come from within himself, and Krebs comes to terms with his truth, experiences, and the fact that home is not the same, and adjusts are needed. 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 acceptance of his return, but Krebs did not get that. Since Krebs was late returning home from the war, and the rest of the hometown heroes had made their celebrated homecomings, it was then that Krebs received no celebrated return whatsoever. So Krebs is dealing with the pain of trying to fit in back home, trying to belong to a place that he once belonged. That sharing of truth however ends up bringing out the actuality of Krebs's cowardice maybe, or rather his frailty in dealing with that awful situation. The short story by Hemingway, "A Soldier's Home" is a story that deals with major transitions in a regular all American kid's life after he returns home from world war I, one being how Hemingway shows just within the first page how difficult life can be returning late from a war that brought so much pain. No, Hemingway says, "Even his lies were not sensational at the pool room" (153). 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). So Krebs was late coming back from the war, which does not help his homecoming in the least, in fact it just makes it plain old worse. There is a significant sentence in the first paragraph, in which Hemingway says, ". owever he enlisted in the marines and went to World War I. In the story Krebs begins to fib about his actual experiences turning his mind upside down with disgust for his real experiences.
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,
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