A Critical Look at Ernest Hemingway’s Soilder’s Home
The man who went to the war from a Methodist college in Kansas was a socialite of some sort. He was in college and in a fraternity. He and his “fraternity brothers” wore “exactly the same height and style collar” (Hemingway 111). Krebs used to fit in. On the Rhine, Krebs is one of two corporals accompanied by two German girls. These are pictures, they are not currently a part of Krebs’s life, and the pictures are not objective. And as it seems to me, the picture of the wartime character is incomplete. The girls are not exceptional and the famous Rhine cannot be seen. The pictures are not what the public would enjoy seeing.
Unlike the men who were drafted to the war, Krebs enlisted and he was not welcomed home elaborately. He was late. Krebs felt “the need” to talk about his experience in the war late too, no one wanted to listen (Hemingway 111).. Krebs eventually had a personal protest against the war. He lied about his experiences because the public’s reaction against the war would not let him maintain or share his true memories. He had been brave in the war and found upon his homecoming that “he fell into the easy pose of the old soldier among other soldiers: that he had been badly, sickeningly frightened all the time” (Hemingway112). With his lies, his memories of bravery became lost.
All Krebs wants is a simple life, a life without consequences. We know that the war had been over for years by the time Krebs returns to Oklahoma. It is clear that in the war, Krebs learned about and had more than enough consequences to deal with. Krebs’s life is suspended in midair it seems, as he sits on the front porch neither in his parent’s house nor on the public street and reads about the war he was in. As he takes this safe observatory approach to life, he has a peaceful existence. He made his daily routines and he is comfortable.
The girls of the town are a pattern. Krebs did not want to have to communicate with any of them even though he found their pattern “exciting” (Hemingway 113). When the girls walked on the other side of the street, he liked them. He liked them far away. They looked better than the French and German girls who did not understand English, but the American girls would want to talk and that would be useless for Krebs. They would not understand Krebs, “the world they were in was not the world he was in” (Hemingway 113). Krebs’s world had been changed by the war that these girls knew nothing of, at least not the truth.
There is a definite matter of “worth” that Krebs uses to explain that he does not want or need a girl (Hemingway 113). The army taught him, he says three times, that he does not need a girl. The trouble he would have to go through to get a girl and to keep her was not worth it to Krebs. His attitude relies heavily on what he learned from the army and what amount of effort would have to be invested to get a girl. The thought of disrupting his daily schedule for traditional courting was not appealing, “not now, not when things were getting good again” (Hemingway 113).
I think Krebs had a lot of self confidence at the end of the war before he came home. He knew he was a good soldier. Returning to a town of people who denied the truths of the war for fictions made him feel inadequate and lowered his self-esteem. I think Krebs is insecure in the familiar-yet-unfamiliar environment of his hometown, and that it is comfortable for him tofind patterns and routines that regulate his life.. Krebs has lost faith in a lot of things, and having a degree of order gives him something to rely on. Krebs replaces “God” with patterns.
Krebs’s sister, Helen, provided him with some helpful reassurance. He is a hero to her and to his other sister we are told. Krebs lied to his mother and to people in general in the story but he does not lie to Helen, his “best” sister. He says that “maybe” he will watch her play baseball, and later he does go and do it (Hemingway 114). The sister wants Harold’s approval and even Krebs would not deny his best sister of that.
The trouble comes about a month after Krebs has been home. His mother is ready to enforce changes on his life. She and his “non-committal” father want him to get a job and get a girl (Hemingway 112). Harold’s feelings have been numbed by the war. His mother expresses how she has worried about her son and how she has prayed for him every day and he coldly watches the bacon fat on his plate harden, just as he did in the war.
The author of By Force of Will, Scott Donaldson says, “World War I , especially, served as a catalyst in crystallizing Ernest’s disillusionment with Oak Park religion” (224). Well, this may not be Oak Park but this soldier does return being disillusioned with religion. Krebs cannot pray. Because Harold went to the war from a religion-oriented college, it is evident that something, somewhere in the war changed his ideas or feelings toward the war. Krebs is a spiritual wasteland.
I do not think it is correct to say that Krebs does not love at all. He does love pool. He has lost human love to some extent. He does go to watch his sister play baseball, just like she said he would if he loved her. Harold’s human compassion was scared in the war. He will never be the same. He will do as his mother and father wish but he will leave their house and get a job in another town. Krebs feels. He is not absolutely numb. He will lie that he loves and he will do what people expect from their loved ones but he will, all the time, pretend that he is normal (or that everyone else is normal).
It is unfortunate that this man had to return from one war to enter another, this time on the home front. It was Hemingway’s objective, it seems, to produce the feelings of alienation in his readers. The reader is almost as removed from Krebs as Krebs is from the people of his hometown. We are only given bits of this man’s life and fewer bits of his words.We do get his mundane thoughts at times, however. But, as always, with unanswered questions like “He enrolled in the Marines, why does he speak of being in the Army?” we know that the focus is not on the milatary Front. As the title implies, this is not “Krebs’s Home” but “Soldier’s Home.” It is implied that Krebs’s situation is universal among solders that didn’t die in the war. Harold’s battle is not over. He is still a solder but this time in a war that is isolated within himself.
Donaldson, Scott. By Force of Will. New York: Viking Press. 1977.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Solder’s Home.” in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition. New York: Collier. 1987. 111-116.
