What is a Soldier’s Home, and Where is the best place for a young soldier to heal after he returns home from the horrors of war? In one of the book’s most striking examples of the brilliance of his craft, Hemingway writes about a soldier returning home from WW I with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a term which was not introduced into the common vernacular until later in the twentieth century. Fittingly, he names his short-story, “Soldier’s Home.” In trying to think about this title without having read it, the participants of my class could not conceive what it might mean. Where is a soldier’s home when he is no longer a soldier? Is it in a convalescent barracks off of the battlefield or in the home he settles in after he is a soldier? Hemingway’s soldier, Harold Krebs, goes back to living with his parents and his sister after returning from the war in an emotionally stressed condition that is not fully explained in the story. By viewing the frustrations that Krebs experiences, we can surmise that he has been damaged psychologically. He came back from the war expecting to fit back into the familiar patterns he had known before the war. However, nothing was the same at home as it had been. Cultural values, religious allegiances, fashions, and expectations of masculinity and femininity were all shifting in ways that Krebs was no longer equipped to handle. Writing in the style of the journalist, The anonymous narrator opens with, “Nothing was changed in the town except that the young girls had grown up. But they lived in a complicated world of already defined alliances and shifting feuds that Krebs did not feel the energy or the courage to break into.”
Later, Krebs says that he “did not want any consequences ever again.” Certainly, without specifically describing it, we can see he is suffering from some type of PTSD. It was a lie, he admitted when stated that he wanted one of these girls, and a lie when he stated that he didn’t want one of them. We can see by the way he describes the girls passing by his porch that he likes their bobbed haircuts, sweaters, and skirts. However, he cannot bring himself to talk to them. He says that life was so much easier in Europe when he didn’t have to talk to the French and German girls at all. He is only comfortably able to talk with his younger sister. She is one of the few people in his their town to still treat him like a war hero. She proposes that he might be her beau and marry her someday, to pledge his love to her, and to prove his devotion by attending her baseball game. Although he assures her that he loves her, he is unable to talk with her about the inappropriateness of her suggestion; perhaps, because it does not fit into any patterns that he understands. He is unable to express his love for his mother, calling her “mommy” and pledging to be “a good boy.” This home hardly seems like the best environment that would be conducive to the healing of soldier who has seen the horror of life and death.
Krebs went home after the war because he wanted to restore himself into patterns. However, we can plainly see that he cannot get any better by living under the care of his mother. Although she means well, his mother patronizes him excessively. She feeds him almost from hand to mouth and lectures him about the need to move forward with his life. In both the funniest and saddest lines of the story, we learn that Krebs breakfast bacon hardens in its own fat during the course of one her of long slippery lectures on the values of the Protestant Work Ethic. She and his father offer to lend Krebs the old family car so he can go into town, presumably, to meet young women. The father (who like many fathers during that period) was notably absent from offering meaningful support to his son. Hemingway, by pointing out this failure, was also likely astutely noticing that post-war young men were becoming sissified because they lacked strong male parental support and guidance at home. The mother asks to pray with her son to guide him out of his malaise. But Krebs can no longer pray, because, after the war, he no longer considers himself part of God’s Kingdom. The horrors of the war that Krebs experienced are not revealed to the reader, and he cannot find any solace in his parents’ home, and he finally realizes that he must leave them and make a new home and life for himself. Perhaps, Hemingway conceals the nature of the trauma that he and his character, Krebs, went through to make his readers ask whether the war was worth the price that returning soldiers and their families paid. Hemingway’s war-related stories illustrate that PTSD damaged soldiers can find it difficult to heal in their parents’ home after they return to civilian life. In his story, Krebs finally decided to leave home and work and work as a reporter in Kansas City., but not before visiting his sister’s baseball game. He never stopped to inform or say goodbye to his parents! Readers also must wonder whether any part of this story pertains to the issues that the real-life Ernest Hemingway, who faced after he returned home from World War I.
This story also reminds us that Hemingway’s works are still relevant in our lifetime when thousands of soldiers attempt to return from Iraq and Afghanistan with paralyzing post-traumatic stress disorders. Recent discussions on this topic have suggested that we must try to commit more resources to help them heal and re-adjust to the normal patterns of society. However, even the most well-meaning people will often be unable to offer the best home for them. Like Krebs, they may never be healed unless they are able to try to figure out how to create new homes for themselves with new opportunities.
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