Analyzing William Wyler's 'The Best Years Of Our Lives'

Tessa Moroni
Mark McKinnon
ENGL 15
23 September 2014
Hope & Redemption after WWII
Prompt: Discuss how William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives is an examination of the confusion and emotional turmoil experienced by American military servicemen and their families during the aftermath of WWII. Explain how the film’s focus on the three veterans- Al, Fred, and Homer- offers a sense of hope and redemption for them, their loved ones, and all of America.
Thesis: William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives is an examination of the emotional turmoil experienced by the main characters and their families during the aftermath of WWII. Through the confusion the film depicts the hopes and later redemption of Al, Fred, and Homer.
The film is set in
It is especially hard when everything and everyone has changed. The experiences of war harbor deep emotional turmoil for Al, Fred, and Homer. When Al gets home after the war, he has a very difficult time readjusting to home life. The first morning he is back, he is surprised and confused to wake up in his room at home, almost like it was a dream. Al did not really feel comfortable in his own home which left him restless. War had taught him to always be on his guard and he has a hard time of letting that go even in the security of his own home. When he goes back to his banking job he realizes that he was not the tough banker he used to be. Al’s boss gives him the job of being in charge of the GI Bill loans given to servicemen coming home from war. Because of his experiences during wartime, he believes every service man deserves his due and approves loans without collateral. Al’s boss ends up having a problem with this and it remains a conflict for Al. Al’s emotional turmoil isn’t as intense as Fred’s, but he is still a changed man due to his wartime experiences. Fred has PTSD, which shows itself by the horrible lifelike nightmares he has daily. His wife, who he married during the war, doesn’t understand him or his PTSD. She believes that he should just be a man and make the nightmares go away. This is just one of the strains that is put on there already fragile marriage. Finding a job for veterans after the war proves extremely tough. Many wives and older children had to get jobs after the bread winner left for war. Because of these hard times Fred couldn’t find a job other than his old soda jerk job. After a fellow service man tells Homer that he lost his hands for nothing, Fred sticks up for his friend causing him to lose his soda jerk job. Losing his job is another of the many strain on his marriage. After coming back from the war he finds that he has an interest in Peggy,