Soldier's Home

Hemingway, the author of this short story, contributed the modern American hero to American Literature. One of the key characteristics of this hero is that he is thoroughly disillusioned with...

At the beginning of the story, Krebs's disconnection from society is made evident when the narrator observes "he came back much too late" from the war. The welcome ceremonies for the returning...

In order to understand the significance of the contrast between the two pictures, it's important to get an overview of the entire story. "Soldier's Home," by Ernest Hemingway, tells of a soldier...

That's a very good question. One might argue that the lack of male figures in the story is a reflection of the great damage that has been done to men by the bloody cataclysm of the First World War....

Krebs’s experience in the war taught him to simplify his feelings. In fact, it is as if the war taught him to suppress all feeling. When the narrator says that Krebs's lies in the pool room robbed...

Krebs is emotionally damaged from his war experience and feels unable to make himself understood to anyone except the veterans who can empathize with him. He is interested in girls and enjoys...

Krebs thinks the history book about all the battles he has been in is "the most interesting reading he has ever done. He wishes there were more maps...now he was really learning about the...

A Hemingway code hero, Krebs wants to "live alone without consequences" because he has felt the "nausea in regard to experience that is the result of untruth or exaggeration." In short, he does not...

When Harold Krebs returns from having experienced the horrors of World War I in the fields of France where many were slaughtered and gassed, he has "a distaste for everything." Krebs does not feel...

Krebs spends his days in a state of listlessness; he does not want to become involved in the intrigues and politics of his town's life. Because he finds things at home "too complicated," he...

When WWI was declared and the US became involved, Ernest Hemingway was eager to join the fight. However, the Army rejected him because of his poor vision. Hemingway volunteered to become an...

It's almost certain that Hemingway intended for the title of his short story "Soldier's Home" to be ambiguous and to be interpreted in different ways. The most obvious meaning of the title is that...

Krebs leads a monotonous life and seems to prefer it that way. He is recovering from all the emotions he experienced in Europe during World War I. He returns to his home town in Oklahoma in the...

In "Soldier's Home" by Ernest Hemingway, the protagonist returns home after World War I and finds himself permanently changed. He can no longer relate to the people in his community or even to his...

The third person limited narration really allows readers access to the emotional state of Harold Krebs, who has recently returned home from fighting in World War I. Harold feels completely...

I guess the central irony of this story is the way that Krebs finds himself alienated from the very society and culture that he risked his life to protect. This story brilliantly presents us with a...

Krebs has been through a great ordeal in Europe during World War I. It has been a traumatic experience as well as a learning experience. He feels like an entirely different person, but he does not...

The narrator tells us that Helen is his “best sister.” While eating breakfast, she presents herself as assertive, possibly challenging his masculinity, which is already feeling very weak after his...

The central conflict of Hemingway's story "Soldier's Home" is the problem of Krebs's re-entry into his old life after what he experienced in World War I. While Krebs desires to speak with someone...

In a nut shell, Harold Krebs leaves his home town because he can no longer relate to any of the people around him. That includes his family. Harold Krebs is a war veteran. Like most war veterans,...

Hemingway could have added a great deal of description of what Harold Krebs had gone through during the fighting in Europe in World War I, but he chose to focus on how Krebs was feeling after he...

It's plausible to say that Harold Krebs had a decent relationship with his family before he went off to war. His sisters, especially, look up to him as evidenced by Helen's claim that she wants him...

Krebs' soul has effectively been corrupted by his experiences of war. Despite attending a Methodist college, Krebs appears to have lost his faith. But it's so much more than that. As well as no...

"Soldier's Home" is not so much about the death of the American Dream as it is about Krebs's ability or desire to pursue what we have come to believe is the American Dream: upward mobility in...

The detached third-person perspective used by Hemingway in "Soldier's Home" is entirely appropriate given the story's subject matter. What Hemingway wants to convey is the sense of detachment that...

Krebs is the protagonist of Ernest Hemingway's short story "Soldier's Home," which is set in 1919, after World War I is over. Krebs was not drafted like so many others were; instead, he enlisted in...

At the beginning of World War I, combatant soldiers, steeped in nationalism, looked at war as a way to demonstrate their courage and achieve glory. Although they didn't enter the war until 1917 and...

Well, I don't know if the word "hero" is entirely accurate. When we think of the fiction of Hemmingway we see he is actually very adept at creating protagonists that are more accurately described...

Unfortunately I had to edit your question as it actually asked multiple questions. Enotes regulations only allow you to ask one question, so I have focussed on your first question. When we consider...

Krebs, who suffers from his experiences in the war that do not match up with the perceptions of his family and the residents of his town, simply desires a quiet life of no commitments, a life...

The short story "Soldier's Home" by Ernest Hemingway tells of a soldier named Harold Krebs who returns to his home town in Oklahoma after World War I. At first, he does not want to talk about the...

Krebs tries to resolve his inner conflict by rejecting his home town and all that it represents. Since returning from the war, he feels completely alienated from those around him, as they haven't...

Krebs is actually encouraged by reading the history of his war. Hemingway writes Krebs "sat there on the porch reading a book on the war. It was a history and he was reading about all the...

When a big war like World War I ends, the servicemen do not immediately return home. There is a long period of processing and transporting thousands of men back to the U.S. There is also the...

Good question! This easily overlooked detail in Ernest Hemingway's short story "Soldier's Home" may contribute in more than one way to the meaning of the work as a whole. For one, this photograph...

There are several symbols in this story of the traumatized soldier Harold Krebs. He comes home from World War I to his small town in Oklahoma and does not find anyone who can understand him or what...

The photograph is an interesting detail. It’s the second photograph mentioned at the beginning of the story: the first is the photo of Krebs in college with his fraternity brothers, all with the...

It is clear from the subject of this story and the way that Hemingway examines the long-term consequences of war on humans that this story is not a joyful one with a happy ending. Instead, the...

There are two psychological problems in the story, "Soldier's Home." The first is the psychological impact upon Kreb of his experiences fighting in World War I. This impact is generally understood...

Hemingway centers many of his stories novels around his personal experiences, especially those from WWI where he was wounded an ambulance driver. He is one of the authors named "The Lost...

Krebs decides to leave home because he can no longer relate to the people around him. This is an all-too-common experience among war veterans. Krebs witnessed a lot of death and suffering at first...

In Hemingway's short story "Soldier's Home" Harold Krebs has returned from World War I a changed man. None of the people in his small Oklahoma town understand the horrors he experienced. They...

We can only know Hemingway's attitude toward the protagonist in "Soldier's Home" through the narrator of the story. You should be careful of associating a narrator or speaker with the author....

As the previous educator notes, the physical setting of "Soldier's Home" is a small town in the Midwest, not unlike Hemingway's own hometown of Elk Grove, Illinois, to which he, like Krebs, also...

I see two primary themes in Ernest Hemingway's short story, "Soldier's Home." One is the how fear can paralyze and take everything from you, and the other is how conformity can leave one isolated....

Hemingway's style is that of a journalist and a soldier: plain, tough, intimate without sounding emotional, trustworthy, direct. In a word, it is full of ethos, credibility. Hemingway was...