In his story “Soldier’s Home,” Ernest Hemingway tells the tale of Krebs, a soldier who fought in World War I and now returns to his hometown. However, he is a transformed man and the life that awaits him upon his return is as complicated as the war. After fighting in the lengthy, wearisome war, all Krebs wishes is to find a safe haven in his home, but he is once again faced with complexity. His mother nags him that he should start leading normal life by finding a job, looking for a wife, and have children. Moreover Krebs “who had been at Belleau Wood, Soissons, the Champagne, St. Mihiel and in the Argonne did not want to talk about the war at all” (Hemingway), which further reveals the conflict of Hemingway’s story and within Krebs himself.
The truth, something that readers can eventually decipher, is that Hemingway, who himself served in the military during the First World War, is conveying his opinions of life after the war through his character. Usually, the world “home” evokes a feeling of a warm shelter. The title of Hemingway’s story might imply the same, but the home in his story does not seem to assure that comfort to Krebs. For him, his home is quite like the warfront, “a complicated world of already defined alliances and shifting feuds” (Hemingway). Hemingway set his story after the end of the First World War, in around 1919. The way he has described the culture and women, he leaves it to the readers to assume that the story is set in any American town.
The theme of Hemingway’s short story is that complications are a part of life, but facing them one by one rather than falling under pressure because of them is the proper way of approaching them. In the first half of this short story, Krebs' character and how he feels upon his return are introduced by Hemingway. The war has left him apathetic and nonchalant, and he despises the fact that his life at home is still full of complications. Hemingway has depicted Krebs’s relationship with his family through the dialogue between them in the next part. As a result of his apparent impatience, he ends up arguing with his mother when she asks him, “Don't you think it's about time?” nagging him to reinsert himself into society. However, near the end, Hemingway shows the readers the Krebs’s hopeful yet practical side, as he accepts the fact that the complications of life cannot be controlled, and that he should face them, living life one day at a time.
In this short story, Hemingway has used three different tones. At the beginning, Krebs alludes to his situation in a realistic, factual sense, providing a description of his surroundings and their effects on him. He just has a desire for simpler things. “He wanted his life to go smoothly” (Hemingway). Later he loses hope of living a fruitful life free of complications when he gets into a heated argument with his mother. Finally, as the story nears its end, he concludes that his he cannot control the outcome of his life. He decides to let his life progress as it is meant to, “go to Kansas City and get a job” (Hemingway), and face whatever has to come.
Hemingway tells the story from a third person perspective. This way he makes it easier for readers to comprehend the Krebs’s emotional state and thoughts because of the pressure from his family, who want him to find his place in society once again. Hemingway has always used a concise, direct and precise style of writing, without too much metaphorical language to adorn his works, which can be seen in “Soldier's Home” as well. Writing “the truest sentence you know” ("goodreads.com") is what Hemingway believed in; therefore, his short story does not contain any allusions, motifs or symbols. Like his other works, he adopted his straightforward form of writing to write this story. In conclusion, Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” can be described as ironic since he does not give the readers any clue of Krebs’s future life.
Works Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. "Soldier's Home." In Our Time. 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction edition. Scribner, 1996. Print.
"Quote by Ernest Hemingway: All you have to do is write one true" goodreads.com. Goodreads Inc. Web. 8 Jan 2013.
