Initial personal reaction : Soldier's
Home is a story that hits home in many ways. The story made me think
of the life of a soldier, how people can't connect with them on the
same level because combat soldiers are still living in combat even if
they are not fighting anymore. Only a fellow soldier can connect
with them on the same level. As a U.S soldier that have been to
combat and back, I think soldiers will never be the same as their old
self before the experience at war. The patterns of their thoughts is
very practical and realistic. They tend to look at life in Black and
White especially after their return. Time is a very good friend to
them. It makes them adapt and conform to society and sugar coat their
interactions with society and add color to their world.
Literary Element /Thematic Analysis: In
the story Soldier's Home, Hemingway sets an atmosphere that is very
realistic. He translated the suffering of shell-shock through the
guilt felt towards actions at war. He described Krebs with no
feelings , looking only to satisfy a faint need for a girl as an
object to relief a sexual need yet it was barely present.
Hemingway sets an atmosphere that is
confusing to me. I didn't follow the sense of time lost. Why did
kerbs return home years later. I read at first that he enlisted in
the Marines in 1917 . He returned home in 1919. the time line didn’t
make any sense to me. Where was kerbs in the period between 1919 and
his return to his home town? How old was he when he returned? When
Hemingway described the photograph with the two girls saying: Krebs
and the corporal look too big for their uniforms. This sentence
started many questions that I couldn’t pinpoint an answer to.
Questions/ comments: why did Harold
never talk to his father? If he did what do you think the
conversation would be like between harold and his father?
