Essay Instructions: Chad Chambers
Mrs. Goodridge
English 113 YN1
25 October 2010
The Returning of Soldiers from Combat in America
?Soldiers Home?
Although Earnest Hemmingway?s, ?Soldiers Home? (187) was written in 1925, and the war at that time was different, there are several things in the story that still ring true today for servicemen. In ?Soldiers Home? (187) Krebs, the main character in the story goes through some changes while he is away fighting in the Marine Corps. Krebs was a young man from Kansas who is in college at the time that he is drafted into the Marine Corps. So he leaves his friends and family to go overseas to fight for his country, as do the young men and women of todays armed forces. As told by the author Krebs fights in some of the toughest battles that were ever fought, ?Belau Wood, Soissons, Champagne St. Mihiel, and The Argonne Forrest? (187), he feels out of place when he returns home from combat as a lot of soldiers do today returning from Iraq, and Afghanistan. Problems troops have returning home from World War I, as well as the present conflicts in Iraq, and Afghanistan are not very different in the way they are handled by the soldier himself and the way society looks at them.
Krebs enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1917 from a Methodist college in Kansas and immediately went to fight in combat around the world. He doesn?t return home until the summer of 1919, which was far later than the other servicemen had returned. As a result of this he doesn?t get any parades or celebrations to welcome him back home. As the author puts it, ?By the time Krebs returns to his home town in Oklahoma the greetings of heroes was over.? (187) Also he doesn?t really engage in conversation with a lot of people because of the fact that they are not interested in what he has to say about the war since all of the other returned soldiers had told their stories and really blown them out of proportion. Krebs stories are boring to the people even though they are true and actually from real combat, and what actually happened. This is like the soldiers returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan; the way people tell stories but didn?t really do anything, while the ones that were in some real combat do not want to talk about it.
Krebs eventually starts to tell stories to the local population, but he has to lie to keep their attention. As he continues to tell the stories and lying, the author suggests that Krebs starts to feel sickened by the exaggeration and lies being told by him as well as, the other soldiers in town about the war. Krebs starts to feel ?badly, sickeningly, frightened all the time.? ?In this way he had lost everything.? (188) As a result Krebs had started spending most of his time in the pool hall, library reading books about the wars he had fought in, and then actually isolating himself from others as well. From World War I to Desert Shield and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the signs and symptoms of problems has not really changed. Isolation from people, loss of faith in religion, loss of love for everyone because you don?t even love yourself due to the things you had to do in combat, so how can you love anyone else. The feelings of depression, anxiety, flashbacks, and severe mood swings are the same except for the names of the problems. In World War I they are called Shellshock, and present day they are called PTSD ?Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.? Krebs is also afraid of relationships with American girls now that he has returned home, because of being around French, and German girls who were loose and no strings attached.
With Krebs after two years of combat, he is not used to the American way of courting a girl anymore. He is only used to going to the local whore house or picking up a French or German girl that only wanted one thing, and that one thing was all he was after. So with the American girls he didn?t want everything to go along with them as for example, having to date them and actually have a relationship with them and to open himself up to them as well. So Krebs stayed away from the dating of American girls. These same problems still exist today as well. The returning combat soldier doesn?t want to date or for that matter open themselves up to a female that they may have known only a couple of months. They would just as well not have anything to do with the whole ordeal, because they can barely live with themselves because of what they have had to do in combat so how can anyone else, especially a female live with them. As the author points out ?Krebs wanted to live without consequences, besides who really needs a girl?? (188) While Krebs is dealing with these problems he is also dealing with problems at home as well, with his mother and father and siblings as well.
Krebs doesn?t really trust his parents and what they think is good for him anymore, which also causes loss of love for them as well. Although he is a hero to his younger sister Helen, he doesn?t feel like he is towards his parents. It?s like life just don?t and that their problems are not really that important compared to what he has been through. His mother is trying to get him to make a choice of what to do with his life in the sense of a job, as the author states ?Don?t you think it?s about time?? (190) Which is his mother trying to say it?s time for you to get up and do something productive, or to enter the job force. Krebs in his mind thinks that he will find and get a job later when he thinks it?s the right time. Krebs also has love issues as well, as the author says, ?Don?t you love your mother anymore?? (190) Krebs is finding it hard to love anyone again because of his loss of love for himself after the things he has had to do in combat. Along with the loss of love, Krebs also has a loss of religion as well. His mother mentions God and his kingdom to Krebs and as the author writes ?I?m not in hi kingdom.? Krebs again is speaking to his mother when this is stated. Coming from the loss of love for his own mother and loss of faith in God, the author suggests several other things that are going on here in this short story. The reader can actually put themselves there in that time period and in the situations that Krebs gets into, as well as what he is thinking about. The author does a masterfully good job depicting the soldier returning home from battle to things that seem to be timeless.
With Krebs not really trusting his parents, and his loss of love as well the author shows the reader several issues that can affect a soldier returning home from combat. Along with the loss of interest in relationships, and not having a reason to interact with the towns people or even listen to his parents, they all show some of the struggles facing returning servicemen and women then and today. The problems with the American soldier returning home from combat are worse than people may think. They go a lot deeper than people may think. They can range from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Traumatic Brain Injury, hearing loss, anxiety, depression, and even isolation. These are the problems that are unseen by society and have been written about since 1925.
As Krebs returns home from war in 1919, he is faced with issues of being back in the civilian society. Whether a soldier fought in World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Somalia, or Iraq and Afghanistan, the problems of the returning veteran are handled the same then as they are now personally, within the soldier and with the general public.
The Vietnam War was mentioned a few times in some of the twenty or so readers' responses. Response 4 says "Although written in 1923, it (is) more recognizant of the Vietnam War". The Vietnam War is told though many stories, TV shows, movies, and any other form of media you can think about. This war had a profound effect on civilians and as such has led some readers to compare Krebs' life to Vietnam veteran's lives. The familiarity of the Vietnam War allowed some people to relate to Krebs's position in life.
There were multiple readers who commented on Krebs' mental stability. This is interesting as it shows a huge educational jump from the early 1900's to the present day average education. Is it possible that Hemmingway would have agreed with response 2 when they spoke of Krebs "needing a little bit of counseling to help him through it". The sad part is that according to the preface Hemmingway himself was in a similar situation "This experience haunted him and many of the characters in his short stories and novels" (152). Does this mean that Hemmingway himself could have benefited from this counseling?
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Although this is not considered an autobiography, it certainly contains some relevance to Hemingway's life and can be interpreted many ways. "Soldier's Home" is a story about a young man, Harold Krebs, who returns home from World War 1 in a time in which the country was to "return to normalcy." His relationship with his family is increasingly deteriorates, he cannot adapt to the changes that have taken place in his community, and he cannot leave the tragic events of the war behind him.
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"Soldier's Home" demonstrates that a nation without a clear and honest picture of what its soldiers have endured will be incapable of understanding them when they return, and, therefore, will be incapable of insuring their successful reentry into civilian life. Hemingway drives this point home though a number of details. We note, for example, that while Krebs enjoys reading histories of the various battles in which he has participated an indication that more sober, non-propagandistic accounts of the Great War had become available by the early 1920s--his neighbors remain under the sway of wartime fantasies and folklore, preferring tales of "German women chained to machine guns in the Argonne forest" (70). And, ironically, while probably no one in Krebs's community possesses as much direct, first-hand knowledge of military violence as Eugene does, he is unable to discuss his experience with anyone: "His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities"
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To understand conflict effectively, therefore, the reader needs to be able to identify what is threatened--i.e., a character's core values. Understanding. core values is the key to understanding character, which, in turn, leads to understanding conflict, plot, and the underlying design of a narrative--especially a subtle, conflict-driven narrative like Hemingway's "Soldier's Home."
One of the most significant falsifications of the story occurs when Krebs tries to smooth his mother's feelings after telling her he does not love her. She is weeping. He says to her, "I didn't mean I didn't love you". This lie causes him to feel "sick and vaguely nauseated" because it means that he has betrayed his core values. Bravery--a cool courage in the face of great threats--lies at the very center of an Artisan's soul. In Krebs's view, his mother causes him to deny what he truly feels and, thus, to act in a cowardly fashion. An Artisan will act in this way only under the greatest stress, and only for a short-term tactical success: "I'll try and be a good boy for you" , he says. This reply is surely galling for Krebs who, like all Artisans, abhors dependency of any sort, to say nothing of the Artisan's scorn for being "good." He is forced to accede to his mother's emotional blackmail and play the role of "boy" to her role of parent. This is no easy thing for an Artisan--especially for one who has been a man and a warrior. Love, to Krebs, is therefore something that makes a man lie, that entangles him and restricts him, and that focuses on abstract virtues that have little or no interest to the sensualist Artisan he is. By adulterating his war experience with verbal misrepresentation, Krebs "lost everything".
Krebs's Guardian parents cannot understand their Artisan son and his refusal to reenter the safe, orderly, unexciting life they so prize. Although Krebs's mother does ask him about the war, when Krebs tries to tell her, "her attention always wandered?. His Guardian mother, afraid for his safety and frightened by the temptations to which war exposes men, prayed nightly for him while he was overseas. Of all the temperament types, the Guardians are the most "conscious of their social status, their standing in the community--having the right job, the right friends, the right possessions--and so they often push harder to make certain their spouses and children behave in a socially acceptable manner..." (Montgomery, Guardian 82). Krebs's parents expect him to get a job and a "nice" gift: in short, they expect him to assume the routines of middle class, middle American life. His mother tells Krebs, "Your father does not want to hamper your freedom. He thinks you should be allowed to drive the car. If you want to take some of the nice gifts out riding with you, we are only too pleased". How galling this must be for Krebs. He does not want to go out with "nice" girls, not after his matter-of-fact liaisons with European women. Driving the car might have represented a chance at significant freedom for Krebs the college man, but its allure pales for the worldlier veteran. His parents are asking him to sell his freer, adult self for a mess of middle-class pottage.
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Hemingway's "Soldier's Home" is a remarkable illustration of the conflict and tension that result from the collision of different core values arising from contrasting temperaments. In 1924, Hemingway--who had returned from World War I to his Oak Park, Illinois home in 1919--felt the somewhat autobiographical story was the best he had ever written (C. Baker 138). The central character, Harold Krebs, musters out of the military and returns to his Oklahoma hometown long after the rest of the American Expeditionary Force has returned, been feted, and resumed their more conventional lives. Krebs seems unable to readjust to civilian life. His parents, for their part, are unable to understand why Krebs cannot resume a "normal" life, which for them means getting a job, finding a girl, and settling down into the customary rhythms of middle-class, middle-American life. At first, the conflict in "Soldier's Home" may seem barely perceptible. Krebs returns home to a quiet life
sleeping late in bed, getting up to walk down town to the library to get a book, eating lunch at home, reading on the front porch until he became bored and then walking down through town to spend the hottest hours of the day in the cool dark of the pool room. His parents have only increased the tension he feels by highlighting the impossibility of his finding an exciting, unfettered, and uncomplicated life while living in their world. In the story, the car is a good symbol for freedom and mobility, around which the silent struggle for control is waged. A different object for Hemingway, with lesser potential for use in fiction but with similar overtones, was the library card. Like Krebs, Hemingway enjoyed reading about the war.
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Works Cited
Hemmingway, Earnest. ?Soldiers Home.? The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 9th Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins 2011. 187-192. Print
This paper should keep this same theme of soldiers problems from then until now, and need to use the sources that I have on here from ebcohost.com. the paper is already an analysis paper and just needs to have the research added to it in support of the paper.
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