Isolation In Soldiers Home

After experiencing the violence of war, it is difficult for a soldier to readjust back into society causing alienation and a strain to return home both physically and emotionally. In Hemingway’s short story, “Soldier’s Home” the main character Harold Krebs lies, is incapable of love and he struggles to readapt to his family and community. Eventually, he will accept the idea that he can never really go home.

Oklahoma is Krebs’ home, a place untouched by the effects of war. Krebs will experience a clash of his two lives that are significantly different. Hemingway clearly illustrates the contrast of Krebs’ two lives, “There is a picture which shows him among his fraternity brothers, all of them wearing exactly the same height and style collar…. There is a picture which

Cohen’s review of “Soldier’s Home” first assumed that the exchange with a fellow soldier, Krebs could admit how he really felt in combat: frightened” (162). However, if Krebs can tell the truth why does the encounter end in his loss and Hemingway uses the word pose. Cohen believes, “If pose means a false appearance, then Krebs is simply falsifying his experience once again by pretending he was badly frightened in combat, the common denominator, when in fact he had actually performed easily and naturally” (162). Krebs seems to be trapped in different webs of lies. Cohen explains, “The town is built on lies, on game-playing rituals: the courtship game, the success game, the religion lie, the love lie, the patriotism and heroes lies. None of this is new, but a changed Krebs sees it with new eyes “(163). Krebs is struggling to assimilate because what he thought was home doesn’t really exist anymore. Regardless of his role in the war, the experience has caused him to see things as a man and not as a boy anymore. The rituals and the beliefs he accepted as a boy are now challenging for him to blindly