Soldier's Home

In the conversation between Mrs. Krebs and Harold at the end of the story, Mrs. Krebs asks Harold if he has decided what he is going to do with the rest of his life. She and her husband want...

Helen is demonstrative and loving toward Krebs, and he is accepting of her adoration. The love they share is pure; Helen is not yet at an age when the psycho-social separation from family begins to...

Krebs has missed the big celebration for returning veterans. As Hemingway says, “People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over,”...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

Let us remember that symbolism can be related to objects but also actions and characters. The major symbolism in this story relates to how Krebs lives his life once he has returned from war and how...

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...

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....

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...

While there is not much evidence to say for sure what Harold Krebs was like before he went off to war, it might be safe to say, judging from the text, that he was probably a conformist and an...

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...

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...

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...

In the short story “A Soldier’s Home,” Hemingway discusses the plight of Krebs, a soldier who returns from his tour of duty in the First World War to his hometown. The title of the story highlights...

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...

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...

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, 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 moral, as I see it, in the short story "Soldier's Home" by Ernest Hemingway is the toll that war does take on men and women, even if they believe that they have been unscathed by serving their...

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...

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...

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...

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...

"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 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...

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...

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...

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...

First of all, it's important to remember that mood is the feelings created within the reader. Since mood is a response to the work—and every reader responds differently to a piece—the same work may...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

"Soldier's Home" comes to a climax in its final scene, in which the disaffected young WWI veteran Corporal Krebs, vocally rejects the conventional practices and religious belief his fretful mother...

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...

The central idea of this story shows that the experience of war changes a person so much that he may never be able to fit back into the life he had before - those who have not shared the same...

"Soldier's Home" represents the lost generation, the WWI veterans' conflict with society upon their return home. The conflict in the story is man vs. society, in that the small town community's...

The protagonist and antagonist of a novel are the opposing forces that drive the plot along. The protagonist is the main character, typically the "hero" of the story, as the plot is centered around...

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...