Soldiers Home Analysis

In “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway, Harold Krebs goes about his life as normally as he can after returning home from World War I. Try as he might, Krebs discovers that he is no longer the same person that he used to be and that he is unable to return back to his normal routine. Krebs is unable to assimilate back into a normal civilian life because he suffers from post traumatic stress disorder and shell shock as a result of his time spent in the service. This condition also causes him to have a difficult time relating to his family in the same way. After coming home from war, Krebs finds it difficult to relate to his family, a common problem for many veterans after returning home from war. Krebs served in World War I, a time when “shell

Krebs clearly has experienced an “emotional collapse”, and he no longer feels emotions such as sympathy, lust, or ambition, which creates issues in his personal relationships with his family. When Krebs is called into the kitchen to have an intense conversation with his mother, she shares her concerns for his wellbeing and instead of looking her in the eye, Krebs “looked down at the bacon fat hardening on his plate”(Hemingway 255). This reaction shows that Krebs has resigned himself from the conversation, and he has given up on trying to connect with his mother. Instead of looking her in the eye and acknowledging her concerns, he turns away from her gaze and casts his eyes downwards, waiting for the conversation to be over. According to Psych Central, “the more prolonged, extensive, and horrifying a soldier’s or sailor’s exposure to war trauma, the more likely that she or he will become emotionally worn down and exhausted”.

He is “emotionally worn down” to the fullest extent of the phrase, and he is unable to have long, drawn out, emotional conversations about his future, so instead he opts to resign from the conversation and stare down at his plate. Krebs is unable to sympathize with his mother’s emotions, nor is he able to express any of his own. Towards the end of their conversation, his mother asks “‘Don’t you love your mother, dear boy?’ ‘No,’ Krebs said… It wasn’t any good. He couldn’t tell her, he couldn’t make her see it”(Hemingway 256). As Krebs has mentioned, he is tired of lying about his thoughts and feelings, or lack thereof, and instead of sympathizing with his mother, he bluntly admits that he does not love her. Shell shock resulting from his experiences at war are to blame for this outright disregard for his mother’s feelings. In a book written about shell shock, authors Grafton Smith and Thomas Pear go on to assert that victims of shell shock usually “find expression in outbursts of pugnacity or of unusual self-assertion… possibly following close on the heels of a mood of blatant self assertion with no regard for the feelings of others”(90). Krebs’s direct response of “no” shows his clear disregard for his mother’s feelings. He appears to regret