Critical Analysis of the Theme of Pessimism and Death - Essay Example

A Critical Analysis of the Theme of ‘Pessimism and Death’ The central theme of Earnest Hemingway’s story “Soldier’s Home” is the ennui of a young war-veteran, Harold Krebs, who has just returned to his home from the World War I. In the story, the author has attempted to work out this theme through masterful manipulation of different literary techniques such as point of view, tone, setting and language. From the third person point of view, Hemingway’s narrator describes Krebs’s absurdity, which becomes affected with after his return from the war. Krebs’ ennui evolves from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Hemingway has, artfully, translated this PSTD-induced ennui of a young veteran Krebs into the atmosphere of the story. In this regard, Laurence W. Mazzeno comments, “The overriding atmosphere of this story is one of pessimism, almost defeatism without hint of defiance--a rather unusual stance for Hemingway” (2). Hemingway draws a very minimal reference to the horror of war which Krebs is suffering from. Rather he makes it an intangible presence throughout the whole story. The simplistic and apparently, naïve narration of how the young veteran feels in his home, minimally, reveals anything about the source of Krebs’s ennui. But the overall atmosphere of the story is, implicitly, associated with the existential consciousness of death, though it itself does not show any straight connection to death. Undeniably, the brilliance of Hemingway’s storytelling lies in the economy of language. It also pivots on his ability to use subtle but strongly figurative language to capture the essence of a situation. Through Hemingway’s narrative technique and style, death and horror of the war turn into the nascent source of Krebs existential ennui. In the story, Hemingway’s hero lives in a ‘death-in-life’ condition, which is induced by his traumatic experience in the war. His life seems to be saturated with an indirect consciousness of death. The theme of war-induced ennui encroaches into the story through the reference to war in the very first sentence of the story: “Krebs went to the war from a Methodist college in Kansas” (Hemingway). The imageries of ‘soldier’ and ‘war’, necessarily, represent something horrible, destructive, etc in a conventional sense. Coming out of the tradition to depict ‘war’ of a soldier’s scope to show heroism of killing, Hemingway’s storyteller does not tell even a single sentence about Krebs’s valor. The narrator simply informs the readers that Krebs’ heroisms are mere ‘atrocities’ like killing, bloodshed, etc: “His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities” (Hemingway 144). Krebs’ ‘atrocity stories’ are the stories of killing bravely, which do not appeal to the town people much. Their temporal interest in hearing war-stories has already subsided by the time Krebs returns among them. So in order to “be listened” Krebs has to “lie, and after he had done this twice he, too, had a reaction against the war and against talking about it” (Hemingway 144). Indeed, this realization of the worthlessness of a veteran in civil life begins the ennui and pessimism in Krebs’s life. For a veteran like Krebs who is affected with post trauma stress disorder, the failure to get social recognition on the basis of his identity as a soldier rather intensifies his ennui. Moreover, Hemingway upholds war as the destroyer of social values and norms. After the war ends, Krebs does not feel the urge to return home, since he loses interest in civil life. Even after returning to his hometown, he, no more, believes in various social institutions such as love, marriage, religion, etc. Since as a solider, Krebs has played a part in the destruction in the war, he can, no longer, have any interest in life. To him, girls are merely nuisances, as “he does not want any more consequences” (). He cannot view women as social personas, since he has seen “German women found chained to machine-gun in the Argonne forest” (Hemingway 144). He cannot “love any girls”; he cannot even love his mother. For him, love is a type of “consequence”, as life itself is as meaningless as death. Throughout the whole story, a sense of nothingness and nihilism pervades Krebs’ mind. This existential absurdity and nothingness is vividly evident in Hemingway’s other stories also. Though the storyteller does not specify the source of Krebs’s sense of nihilism, a close analysis of how Krebs is related to his past as a soldier relates that Krebs’ nihilist view of life, indeed, originates from his experiences of death and destruction in the war. He is tired of playing his role in life. So he likes to remain aloof and wants to view the life from a safe distance. In this regard, the narrator says, “He liked to look at them, though. There were so many good-looking young girls. Most of them had their hair cut short…He liked to look…” (Hemingway 144) In order to work out the above mentioned theme, Hemingway distorts the traditional imagery of ‘home’. In the story, Krebs’s home is not something comfortable, cozy or pleasant. Rather it is meaningless and pervaded with the traumatic memory of the war. It is pervaded with an overriding tone of pessimism. In it, he does not feel secure. He is affected with fatigue which he acquires from the war. In the war, he has encountered a lot of ‘consequences’. So, as the narrator says, “He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without consequences” (Hemingway 146).Here Hemingway’s metaphor, ‘consequence’ stands as a metonymy for the feuds or conflicts. Indeed, Krebs is tired of the war, the deaths, the destructions, the feuds and, after all, the “consequences”. In other words, he is tired of life itself. So he is afraid of even wooing a girl, as the narrator says, “Nothing was changed in the town…But [the young girl] lived in such a complicated world of already defined alliances and shifting feuds that Krebs did not feel the energy or the courage to break into it” (Hemingway 145). Works Cited Hemingway, Ernest. "Soldiers Home", Ernest Hemingway: The Short Stories. New York, NY : Scribner Paperback Fiction Edition, 1995. Read More