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Themes in Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway
Themes in Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway
Themes in Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway
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Themes and Stylistic Elements in Soldier's Home
Hemingway's short story Soldier's Home incorporates many themes and stylistic elements that we associate with Hemingway's writings. The story of the soldier returning from a traumatic war experience and trying to find a way to come to terms with the small-town life he used to live, after being initiated into the adult world of the war including life and death, is an essential theme in Hemingway's writings.
Part of the disillusionment that the character, Krebs, is met with has to do with his trouble in constructing or finding meaning in the concepts that he went to war for, which have now become empty to him:
All of the times that had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside himself when he thought of them; the times so long back when he had done the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else, now lost their cool, valuable quality and then were lost themselves. (p. 111)
Even the Americans who did not participate physically in the war and who were supposed to glorify his efforts and perhaps constitute him as a hero and reaffirm the values for which he went to war are no longer concerned with the concepts of glory and honor, and thus fail to provide him with a fulfilling or "right" feeling of coming back. The disillusionment is furthermore reinforced by the fact that he has arrived too late and as the "hysteria" has passed "Now the reaction had set in." (p. 111). The world that he has returned to is itself struggling with the aftermath of the war and is even trying to forget it. "She often came in while he was in bed and asked him to tell her about the war, but her attention always wa...
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...an abstraction to the reader, and through this characteristic style he isolates the individual character which fits very well the thematical impression he is trying to convey in his writings. The character, Krebs, similarly resists to go beneath the surface and try to communicate his feelings in a complicated and perhaps more precise manner. It even seems like any attempt to make him connect or feel anything makes him nauseous and uneasy. And so the relationship between style and theme in this particular short story incorporates so many characteristic features that it has in many ways come to represent to me and perhaps to many others as it was even made into a TV-drama in 1977, the core of the early Hemingway.
Works Cited:
Hemingway, Ernest. "Soldier's Home", from Ernest Hemingway: The Short Stories. (New York, NY : Scribner Paperback Fiction Edition) 1995.
The New England and Chesapeake regions evolved into different societies because of the settler’s purpose for coming to America. In New England, the settlers desired religious freedom because they were unhappy with religion in England. These religious groups were mainly the Puritans and the Pilgrims. Both coming from the protestant sect of Christianity, these groups were very strict. The work ethic and strict moral code of the Puritans has helped to shape society in their region. Since these people came for religious freedom, it was mostly families that came over. This allowed schools to be built so the children could receive an education. As seen in the list of emigrants going to New England (Document B), a husband and wife would come over with their children, which could be in great abundance. Also showing how societies in New England were more based around families can be seen in the Articles of Agreement that were in place in Springfield, Massachusetts (Document D). This document says that the town should be composed of forty families, not a certain num...
In “Soldier’s Home,” the main character Krebs exhibits grief, loneliness. When he returns home with the second group of soldiers he is denied a hero's return. From here he spends time recounting false tales of his war times. Moving on, in the second page of the story he expresses want but what he reasons for not courting a female. A little while after he is given permission to use the car. About this time Krebs has an emotional exchange with both his little sister and his mother. Revealing that “he feels alienated from both the town and his parents , thinking that he had felt more ‘at home’ in Germany or France than he does now in his parent’s house”(Werlock). Next, the story ends with his mother praying for him and he still not being touched. Afterwards planning to move to Kansas city to find a job. Now, “The importance of understanding what Krebs had gone through in the two years before the story begins cannot be overstated. It is difficult to imagine what it must have been for the young man”(Oliver). Near the start of the story the author writes of the five major battles he “had been at”(Hemingway) in World War I- Bellaue Wood, Soissons, Champagne, St.Mihiel, and Argonne. The importance of these are shown sentences later that the
People in the Chesapeake colonies were unhappy with the rich aristocrats running the show. Francis Bacon led a revolt in Virginia against Governor Berkeley. He felt that the lack of unity among all citizens was apparent and needed to change. He felt that the government at the time was doing an inadequate job at public work i.e. safety, defense, advancement of trade (Document H). This problem was not present among the citizens of the New England colonies as the goals of the New England citizens were different (Document A).
... 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.
Hemingway, Ernest. "Soldier's Home." The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 6th Edition. Ed. Michael Meyer. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's. 2002. 152-57.
The story has different elements that make it a story, that make it whole. Setting is one of those elements. The book defines setting as “the context in which the action of the story occurs” (131). After reading “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemmingway, setting played a very important part to this story. A different setting could possibly change the outcome or the mood of the story and here are some reasons why.
Another large difference between the development of the New England colonies and the Chesapeake Bay region is the development of economic and political structure. All of the original colonies were a part of the Atlantic trade network which included the West African slave posts and Caribbean islands. In the South, the rich farmland meant expansive plantations and a feudal-like structure. The patroon system in New Netherlands was similar in the aristocratic impression, but further North the development of communities was much more prevalent. On the plantations in the South, “planters” would live nearly entirely in self-sufficiency, almost independent but still loyal to the mother country. The land was great for farming crops such
"After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain" (332). This last line of the novel gives an understanding of Ernest Hemingway's style and tone. The overall tone of the book is much different than that of The Sun Also Rises. The characters in the book are propelled by outside forces, in this case WWI, where the characters in The Sun Also Rises seemed to have no direction. Frederick's actions are determined by his position until he deserts the army. Floating down the river with barely a hold on a piece of wood his life, he abandons everything except Catherine and lets the river take him to a new life that becomes increasing difficult to understand. Nevertheless, Hemingway's style and tone make A Farewell to Arms one of the great American novels. Critics usually describe Hemingway's style as simple, spare, and journalistic. These are all good words they all apply. Perhaps because of his training as a newspaperman, Hemingway is a master of the declarative, subject-verb-object sentence. His writing has been likened to a boxer's punches--combinations of lefts and rights coming at us without pause. As illustrated on page 145 "She went down the hall. The porter carried the sack. He knew what was in it," one can see that Hemingway's style is to-the-point and easy to understand. The simplicity and the sensory richness flow directly from Hemingway's and his characters' beliefs. The punchy, vivid language has the immediacy of a news bulletin: these are facts, Hemingway is telling us, and they can't be ignored. And just as Frederic Henry comes to distrust abstractions like "patriotism," so does Hemingway distrust them. Instead he seeks the concrete and the tangible. A simple "good" becomes higher praise than another writer's string of decorative adjectives. Hemingway's style changes, too, when it reflects his characters' changing states of mind. Writing from Frederic Henry's point of view, he sometimes uses a modified stream-of-consciousness technique, a method for spilling out on paper the inner thoughts of a character. Usually Henry's thoughts are choppy, staccato, but when he becomes drunk the language does too, as in the passage on page 13, "I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you
When a writer picks up their pen and paper, begins one of the most personal and cathartic experiences in their lives, and forms this creation, this seemingly incoherent sets of words and phrases that, read without any critical thinking, any form of analysis or reflexion, can be easily misconstrued as worthless or empty. When one reads an author’s work, in any shape or form, what floats off of the ink of the paper and implants itself in our minds is the author’s personality, their style. Reading any of the greats, many would be able to spot the minute details that separates each author from another; whether it be their use of dialogue, their complex descriptions, their syntax, or their tone. When reading an excerpt of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast one could easily dissect the work, pick apart each significant moment from Hemingway’s life and analyze it in order to form their own idea of the author’s voice, of his identity. Ernest Hemingway’s writing immediately comes across as rather familiar in one sense. His vocabulary is not all that complicated, his layout is rather straightforward, and it is presented in a simplistic form. While he may meander into seemingly unnecessary detail, his work can be easily read. It is when one looks deeper into the work, examines the techniques Hemingway uses to create this comfortable aura surrounding his body of work, that one begins to lift much more complex thoughts and ideas. Hemingway’s tone is stark, unsympathetic, his details are precise and explored in depth, and he organizes his thoughts with clarity and focus. All of this is presented in A Moveable Feast with expertise every writer dreams to achieve. While Hemingway’s style may seem simplistic on the surface, what lies below is a layered...
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Dell Inc. is a manufacturer of personal and business computers with a global reach. They are located in Round Rock, Texas and have several manufacturing and customer services sites domestically and globall...
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