Ambiguity In A Soldier's Home

The world was changing during the first half of the 20th century. WW1, a war with 37 million casualties, started shortly after the turn of the century (1914). Soon after that, The Great Depression sprang up in 1929 and the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 25%. WW2, the bloodiest war in history, was the event that vaulted our nation out of the depression and jump started our economy by creating over 17 million jobs for Americans that at that time didn’t have one. Albeit, it also killed over 60 million people, almost 3 ½ times the amount of people that it helped. All of those changes had a big effect on the literature of this time period, and the early modern period was born. Many authors in the Early Modern Literary Period display moral ambiguity

In Hemingway's story, A Soldier's Home, the main character, Harold Krebs who is a soldier coming back from WW1, is very morally ambiguous. Krebs feels lonely when he returns to his hometown (years after his fellow soldiers) and isn’t greeted with the traditional hero's welcome. “When Krebs returned to his hometown the greeting of heroes was over. He came back much too late. The men from the town who had been drafted had all been welcomed elaborately on their return. There had been a great deal of hysteria. Now the reaction had set in. People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over.” Also when Krebs gets back to his town initially he doesn’t want to talk about the war, but eventually when he does nobody wants to listen to him. “Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it.” Krebs feels loved by his family. “ He was still a hero to his two young sisters. His mother would have given him breakfast in bed if he had wanted it.” Even though Krebs isn’t welcomed into his town with open arms, and his stories aren't wanted, he was still loved and considered a hero by his family. Everyone in his family looks up to him and wants to hear his war