Reader-Response on Soldier's Home The initial reaction I received from reading Soldier's Home, and my feelings about Soldier's Home now are not the same. Initially, I thought Harold Krebs is this soldier who fought for two years, returns home, and is disconnected from society because he is in a childlike state of mind, while everyone else has grown up. I felt that Krebs lost his immature years, late teens to early 20's, because he went from college to the military. I still see him as disconnected from society, because there isn't anyone or anything that can connect him to the simple life that his once before close friends and family are living. He has been through a traumatic experience for the past two years, and he does not have anyone genuinely interested in him enough to take the time to find out what's going on in his mind and heart. Krebs is in a battle after the battle. Imagine your hometown, a small, affluent community where everyone knows each other. This small community is where many of your childhood friends and some of your family also reside. If you left your hometown for a two-year period to go into the military, to go to college, to travel the world, or just to experience life somewhere else, how would you expect your friends and family to treat you when you arrived home after a two-year period? Would you expect a warm welcome from your love ones, would you expect to be able to share your experiences, or major events that took place in your life? Would you expect that everyone has changed at least a little bit, and you have changed somewhat as well? I definitely would not expect or would not want my friends and family to reject me, because I had changed due to my life experiences outside our sma... ... middle of paper ... ...has failed to help him deal with his inner emotions from his military experience. He has been through a traumatic experience for the past two years, and he does not have anyone genuinely interested in him enough to take the time to find out what's going on in his mind and heart. Kreb's is disconnected from the life he had before the war, and without genuine help and care from these people he lived with, and around all his childhood life, it's difficult to return to the routines that everyone is accustomed to. Works Cited Hemingway, Ernest. "Soldier's Home." The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 6th Edition. Ed. Michael Meyer. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's. 2002. 152-57. "Reader Responses to Soldier's Home." Literature and Composition. 10 Feb.,2003. David Toth. 14 Feb., 2003. .
O’Brien, Tim. “How To Tell a True War Story.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2003. p. 420-429.
Bagby, the author utilizes the literary device, imagery, to illustrate the fact that he will never be able to forget the severity of the war and the fact that fighting in the war causes him to struggle to keep his sanity due to the terrifying realities he faces. For instance, Bagby writes, “I will never be the same though, never, never, never. If I have to go into battle again, if I am not killed, I will come out insane... The friends I lost and the many bodies I carried back to the helicopters to be lifted out, I will never forget” (Bagby 1). In this passage, Kenneth W. Bagby wrote to his parents that he was afraid of having to go into battle again because felt he would go insane. By using descriptive language, the author is able to appeal the the reader’s sense of fear and helps the reader visualize Bagby carrying soldiers that are injured or deceased to be taken out. With this in mind, the readers can see that war is not an event that Bagby is able to let go of because what he experienced was so horrifying that it will leave a permanent burden on his shoulders. Moreover, Bagby writes “ I got to know this boy well, and he was my best friend. His name was Dan Davis. On Monday morning, the 15th of November, he died in my arms of two bullet wounds in the chest” (Bagby 1). In this quote, Kenneth W. Bagby described the death of his best friend, Dan Davis, which he met on the ship to Vietnam. By being specific about how Dan
In this excerpt from an email written to friends and family, an American soldier describes what it is like to live in Iraq while serving his country. The Soldier describes his living conditions thoroughly and offers many examples. Through the usage of rhetorical strategies like imagery, chronology, and he puts the reader in his position, he tells of his experience and his attitude towards it.
Using references and quotes from three wartime poems I will explain what they tell us about wartime life and the thoughts and feelings of civilians and soldiers. I will also clarify how the poets communicate emotional and moving responses to the disturbing war. The three poems that will be analysed are: · Route March Rest - by Vernon Scannell, · Night Raid - by Desmond Hawkins, · The Battle - by Louis Simpson. I have selected these poems because they contain both similarity and contrast. These aspects are important in order to produce a high-quality essay as they provide a more balanced view of the poems.
... he doesn’t love her but he eventually says sorry. This shows Krebs is really confused on what to say now. He no longer wants to tell lie to the people around him and he stills feels like life will just be too complicated with the lies he’ll have to tell and the job he doesn’t want. “He had felt sorry for his mother and she had made him lie. He would go to Kansas City and get a job and she would feel all right about it” (7). Krebs may forever feel alone in this world that seems stuck in time. He may never feel how he felt before joining the marines. Krebs is living a life that he feels is much too complicated for him. He is no longer the same person he was two years ago. The person he once was is now somewhere buried deep beneath the lies he tells every day to bare the things he has done. Krebs is still fighting a war, not a physical war, but a war within himself.
As the story begin Sergeant X is an confident and uplifting man , but it’s towards the middle and end of the story that we see him disassociate from his surroundings and people that like him. For example in the story while everyone was down on the first floor he was up stair on the second smoking and drinking alone separating himself from the rest and using alcohol to numb his pain (J.D Salinger). When an individual chooses to isolate themselves from their surroundings and people, they become lonely and pained and they would use anything to numb the pain. For Sergeant X he begins to separate himself from everyone as he is at war.There is also a sense that Sergeant X is isolated from those around him. Despite being in England with sixty other soldiers, at no stage of the story does X socialize with any of his fellow soldiers . Even when he does socialize, for example with Clay, he doesn’t enjoy his company (J.D Salinger). This shows a great deal of disassociation and how the build up of isolation can affect you as a person without
The adjustment from years on the frontlines of World War I to the mundane everyday life of a small Oklahoma town can be difficult. Ernest Hemingway’s character Harold Krebs, has a harder time adjusting to home life than most soldiers that had returned home. Krebs returned years after the war was over and was expected to conform back into societies expectations with little time to adapt back to a life not surrounded by war. Women take a prominent role in Krebs’s life and have strong influences on him. In the short story “Soldier’s Home” Hemingway uses the women Krebs interacts with to show Krebs internal struggle of attraction and repulsion to conformity.
First, if there was a point made of the setting what would this story be like? Would Kreb’s be in Paris or Germany still? Would he have come home earlier if he knew it was a more bustling town? Hemmingway made the point of setting this story in a slow Oklahoma town that had no prospects of getting any better. Krebs was out of a Methodist college and went straight to the war (133). Krebs knew the lifestyle that he left behind and what would be expected of him when he returned. His family expected a return to his pre-war state of a young man out of college. The setting in Oklahoma probably did not entice Krebs any longer and he hungered for something better than settling down and becoming a working man. New York City or even Los Angeles might have created a different setting for Kreb’s. Maybe these towns might have offered a more exciting lifestyle for this young man. Hemmingway is maybe trying to portray that Kreb’s was held down by consequences of the war and this Oklahoma town would again have consequences for Kreb’s. Marriage, children, and a steady job were these the consequences Kreb’s spoke of when he mentioned courting the women in this town? Possibly, and he knew that he wasn’t going to live a lie any longer.
...though people believe that, those on the home front have it just as a bad as the soldiers, because they have to deal with the responsibilities of their husbands, there is nothing that can compare to what these men have gone through. The war itself consumed them of their ideology of a happy life, and while some might have entered the war with the hope that they would soon return home, most men came to grips with the fact that they might never make it out alive. The biggest tragedy that follows the war is not the number of deaths and the damages done, it is the broken mindset derives from being at war. These men are all prime examples of the hardships of being out at war and the consequences, ideologies, and lifestyles that develop from it.
During his deployment in Vietnam, Kiley experienced the dark elements of the war, indubitably changing his perspective of the war and him as a person-- from the deaths of his fellow soldiers to the unresolved issues, nightmares, and detachment from reality. What is left of Kiley is only a
Unique in style and content, the novel explores the emotions of a young Civil War recruit named Henry Fleming. What is most remarkable about this classic is that the twenty-four-year-old author had never witnessed war in his life before writing this book. Crane's story developed to some degree out of his reading of war stories by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy and the popular memoirs of Civil War veterans, yet he also deviated from these influences in his depiction of war's horror. Critics have noted that his portrait of war is an intensely psychological one, blending elements of naturalism, impressionism, and symbolism. Indeed, he broke away from his American realist contemporaries, including his mentor William Dean Howells, in his naturalistic treatment of man as an amoral creature in a deterministic world.
In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1208-1209. Hemingway, Ernest. A.
Stewart, Matthew C. "Ernest Hemingway and World War I: Combatting Recent Psychobiographical Reassessments, Restoring the War." Papers on Language & Literature 36.2 (2000): 198-221.
Bloom, Harold. Introduction. Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1987.
middle of paper ... ... so provided the reader with realistic descriptions of the warfront. Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms realistically explores the inglorious and brutal truths of war, and idealistically analyzes the power of true love. Works Cited “A Farewell to Arms Essay – A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway.”