Soldiers Home
'SOLDIER'S HOME': ANOTHER STORY OF A BROKEN HEART
He knew he could never get through it all again.
"Soldier's Home"
"I don't want to go through that hell again."
In the works of Ernest Hemingway, that which is excluded is often as significant as that which is included; a hint is often as important and thought-provoking as an explicit statement. This is why we read and reread him. "Soldier's Home"is a prime example of this art of echo and indirection.
Harold Krebs, the protagonist of "Soldier's Home," is a young veteran portrayed as suffering from an inability to readjust to society--Paul Smith has summarized previous critics on the subject of how Krebs suffers from returning to the ...
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his spiritual wounds. She has determined that Krebs should live in God's "Kingdom," find a job, and get married like a normal local boy .
Although Hemingway locates the story in Oklahoma and excludes it from the Nick Adams group, the husband and wife relationship observed in"Soldier's Home"is also similar to those in "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" and "Now I Lay Me," revealing the mother's dominance of a troubled marriage. Krebs' noncommittal father is obviously dominated by his wife; she makes the decisions. Her advocacy of marriage for Krebs is ironic: not yet recovered from his various psychic wounds and trapped by the sick marriage of his parents, marriage is the very commitment he must avoid.
Furthermore, a careful reading of "Soldier's Home" reveals yet another story discernible beneath the main one. Krebs' indifference towards the girls in the town seems to reflect his disillusionment not only with the war and his parents' marriage, but also with another ...
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his observations of his parents' marriage. As many have noted (see Smith 71-72), one of the photographs discussed in the story's opening paragraphs suggests an unsatisfactory experience with German girls. Krebs and another corporal, both in poorly fitting uniforms, stand with two German girls Who are "not beautiful"beside a Rhine that "does not show in the picture"(145).[1] The picture suggests an irony: the American soldiers, once enemies, date German girls with whom they share no common language. Because the American soldiers do not have to talk, and because the German girls are probably prostitutes, relationships between them are uncomplicated. Without any need for conversation, the ...
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Soldiers Home. (2004, August 23). Retrieved May 18, 2025, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Soldiers-Home/13182
"Soldiers Home." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 23 Aug. 2004. Web. 18 May. 2025. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Soldiers-Home/13182>
"Soldiers Home." Essayworld.com. August 23, 2004. Accessed May 18, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Soldiers-Home/13182.
"Soldiers Home." Essayworld.com. August 23, 2004. Accessed May 18, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Soldiers-Home/13182.
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