Soldiers Home written by Ernest Hemingway - Essay Example

Hemingway depicts a conflict revealing how society is demanding conformity from such struggling souls who fail to fit in the mold of that culture. The story takes a unique form as Hemingway sets it out for Harold Krebs who returns from World War I having lost all his possessions. It is his hometown which receives him with an odd expression, the community wondering why he returned so late. This dark picture of the society demanding and expecting Krebs to return to normal life reflects the cruelty and uncompassionate attitude towards the soldier.

People expect him to glorify the experience of war, something that he did not even come close enough to experience. His familiarity with the war was as gruesome as for the other soldiers but, unfortunately, the community had already heard so many such stories that they refused to listen to his part. On his return home, Krebs already feared the stagnant life of his small hometown in America. Apparently, his father drove the same car but the only difference he could see was in the grown up and modern girls.

Caught between the wishes of his pious mother and materialistic father, he induced self paralysis in him, an act he could not avoid because he could not adjust himself with the people around him. He wished for a simple life. But he has even gone in doubt about his relationship with God. When his mother asks him to look for a job for himself and says “There can be no idle hands in His Kingdom”, Krebs replies, “I’m not in His Kingdom” (Hemingway 351). According to Hemingway, Krebs is now just an observer and not the participant of his life.

He does not feel the need to conform to the rules of the town such as courting a girl and settling down. He has no feelings for women. This depicts the negative connotations Hemingway hints at in the style of the story in which it is written. Surprisingly, Hemingway does not state whether it is good for Krebs or bad that he remains indifferent to the society’s needs but ultimately gives in. Its demand for him not to change but remain who he was is very pressurizing for any human being leave alone an affected soldier who wishes to narrate his war experience to the people.

When he does not get the right kind of attention he deserves, he is compelled to read books about war in which he had participated. He tries to comprehend his own experience by reading about the war. He has lost his natural experience which he did encounter during the wartimes as Hemingway states, “The times so long back when he had done the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else, now lost their cool, valuable quality and then were lost themselves” (Hemingway 348).

When all is lost in a soldier’s life, there is nothing to give back but one’s own significant self. Krebs’ life is not destructive but people’s behavior has made it look like he will have to seclude himself from the society if he resists the change they demand from him. His mother’s prayers for him and love for him signify a mother’s natural instinct; she is helpless in the hands of her husband and the people that surround them. She has become a typical woman of the era who would ask her son to do what the other boys his age are doing.

He realizes