The Unrecognized Soldier Home Essay

The Unrecognized Soldier In the beginning of the short story “Soldier Home,” by Ernest Hemingway, the main character, Harold Krebs is introduced as a young, religious, college frat boy who joins the Army along with some of his fellow peers. He spent 2 years in the Rhine and even took a photo with 2 unattractive German Ladies. When Krebs returns home to an almost unnatural world he feels unfit and unwelcome due to the lack of compassion and notoriety from his home town of Oklahoma. Hemingway says, this may be due to Krebs returning home “much too late” (187). “People seemed to think it was rather ridiculous for Krebs to be getting back so late, years after the war was over” (187). In my opinion, any normal person that experiences this lack of compassion and understanding for the sacrifices they made in war would feel a sense of rejection by the people. This type of rejection would cause any normal person to fall into a state of depression.
Krebs was not welcomed home and his stories filled of actualities were not warranted. Hemingway writes that, “When he felt the need to talk, no one wanted to hear about it” (187). This resulted in Krebs instinctive nature to fabricate stories, in order to gain an audience for his tribulations. Krebs lied because he was disconnected from society and he was building his own reality and his perception of what society wanted to hear. Krebs soon becomes so consumed with his lies and made up stories that he feels he has lost touch with his true self. Krebs became sick and “acquired the nausea in regard to experience that is the result of untruth or exaggeration” (188), “In this way he lost everything” (187). According to the text it can be inferred that Krebs left for the war as an extrovert and returned home as an introvert due to the psychological effects of the