"Soldier's Home" is the story of Harold Krebs, a young man who fought in World War I and returns home to Kansas. However, rather than being welcomed as a hero, people are indifferent to his return, as they've become bored with war stories. Rather than exaggerate what happened to get their attention, he shuts down entirely, drifting through each day without any apparent desire for his mundane life to change.
The story ends with a scene in which, after his mother confronts him about his lack of motivation and urges him to find work, Krebs confesses that he doesn't love anyone -- an admission that drives his mother to tears. Though he immediately assures her he didn't mean what he said, it is clear he is lying and has failed to make her understand the nothingness that is devouring him from within.
Who is Harold Krebs?
Hemingway's effort to distance us from his protagonist would appear to fly in the face of conventional wisdom when it comes to establishing a link between a character and the reader. After all, isn't the fundamental reason why we can genuinely share in the triumphs of a fictional being that this being has ceased to be a stranger? Likewise, isn't the reason we can loathe a villain who is presented as an unambiguously evil force and feel more ambivalent about one whose motives are explained is that, in the case of the latter, there is a chance that we can, to some degree, sympathize with his or her motives, if not necessarily his or her goals?
If "Soldier's Home" was an attempt to make us understand the seething whirlpool of emotions that someone experiences after war, then Hemingway's approach would indeed be counter-intuitive. However, his intent is just the opposite, for rather than have us sympathize with Krebs, we are invited to sympathize with those around him who are unable to penetrate his stoic surface. It is thus the breakdown of communication that constitutes the true tragedy of "Soldier's Home."
A Two-Sided Silence
It would be deceptively easy to blame this breakdown on the indifference of society since we are told that, though he initially did not want to speak about the war, when he later "felt the need to talk...no one wanted to hear about it." This is not surprising, given he was not even warmly welcomed home because people thought it was, "rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over."
But Krebs himself is also to blame, for as a result of his disgust with having to lie and exaggerate in order to interest others, he has given up trying to relate to anyone in any way, going so far as to avoid trying to date a girl because that would involve "intrigue and...politics," and he "did not want to tell any more lies." The only people we know he has been intimate were women in France and Germany whom he could not even understand (though perhaps part of the appeal was rooted in the fact they could not actually communicate properly).
Regardless of who is primarily responsible for this breakdown of communication, the devastating results spare no one. As long as people are unwilling to listen, Krebs will remain trapped in his own private hell, waiting to be saved, while those who love him will remain unaware that he needs to be saved at all.
Source:
- Hemingway, Ernest. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Matt Seidel - Matt Seidel is a freelance writer, teacher, and aspiring novelist who received his MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago.
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