by Megan Pierce

Created on: June 22, 2009   Last Updated: June 23, 2009

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. World War I veteran and Nobel Prize recipient Ernest Hemingway composed those words after he had served with the Red Cross on the European front during the First World War. Later on in his writings, he developed a calloused, tough, detached mentality after he had experienced numerous atrocities on the battlefront. Many literature critics agree that Hemingway suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Hemingway gives a very realistic, yet provoking, depiction of war as seen through his eyes. His exposure to combat during World War I shaped the background for numerous short stories and novellas portraying the many views on war. The short story "Soldier's Home" accurately depicts Hemingway's ideas of returning soldiers and the impact others have on them when they come home. He writes, Krebs did not want to talk about the war at all. Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it. I agree with Hemingway's views on a soldier's feelings and the shock involved with returning to changes.

I can also empathize with his character, Krebs, and the illustration of a hurting veteran and the uncertainties that accompany the young soldier when he finally comes home. I can feel the hurt that the young soldier experiences when his parents show their disappointment in him instead of pride. Your father is worried, too. He thinks you have lost your ambition, that you haven't got a definite aim in life. This lack of dignity shown by his parents seems to have led Krebs through a slight cycle of depression, which leads him to being a compulsive liar.

His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities. Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie, and after he had done this twice he, too, had a reaction against the war and against talking about it. A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of the lies he had told.

Hemingway makes the character feel insufficient and downhearted due to reason that the general hysteria of hero-serenading was over. To make himself feel important enough to the community, Krebs resorts to telling his own stories. His lies were quite unimportant lies and consisted in attributing to himself things other men had seen, done or heard, and stating as facts certain apocryphal incidents familiar to all soldiers. He feels as if there is no one who will listen to him since the general public has already heard and accentuated the war stories that were told. In the words of Hemingway, the greeting of heroes was over. He came back much too late. People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over.

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