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?
Based on the text alone, it seemed like Harold's father had a gruff personality but cared about his son's well being. If they did get the chance to talk Harold would have work at exposing his father's "softer" side and breaking down the walls his father has kept up for most of Harold's life.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteThe Soldier’s Home was somewhat confusing that I thought that Krebs was an imaginary life Howard created pretending to be a soldier due to the many “lies” that he told. The picture did not contain the background that was expected, came home late, and uniform was too big. Then again, it could have been that he was a soldier not wanting the journey to end as life at home was unappealing and complicated as his parents wanted him to take the next steps in life. The author kept on commenting that Howard did not want to live a complicated life, but the end threw me off since was he trying to get with the sister?
: I agree with Carmina, I also thought that Krebs may have also been Harold. Maybe the war was really hard on him and he created Krebs as a coping mechanism. He’s just confused and doesn’t know how to deal with being home and not fighting in the war anymore.
ReplyDeleteThank you for commenting. Harold and Krebs are the same person. The reason there is two names is that in the military, soldiers are called by their last name. But at home his family know him as Harold.
DeleteIt seems to me that Harold's father treated him like a child before he left college to fight in the war. After he returns, his father seems to aknowledge his maturity by giving him permission to use the car in the evenings. However, it seems that their relationship has always been strained as there is never mention of Harold even seeing his father.
ReplyDelete