{"id":17100,"date":"2025-11-16T17:07:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T01:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/?p=17100"},"modified":"2025-11-20T15:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T23:13:09","slug":"personal-response-soldiers-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/personal-response-soldiers-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal Response – Soldier’s Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t like <\/span>Soldier’s Home<\/span><\/i> by Ernest Hemingway.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t know how to feel about our main character, Krebs. On one hand, he’s just a guy who became a Marine and fought in the war. A regular soldier, except that he didn’t hate the war. He felt most sure of himself when he made decisions on the battlefield. This is contradictory to most of the readings in this unit, where we learn about soldiers who hated war and were terrified the whole time. Krebs only resented the war afterwards, when he had to lie about his feelings because others felt differently (ll. 17-22). <\/span>
\n<\/span>On the other hand, he’s a man who believes he’s grown up, but still acts immaturely. “He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without consequences.” (ll. 64-65), and he says he wants a girl without having to talk to a girl, “But he would not go through all that talking. He did not want one badly enough.” (ll. 85-86). There are a couple of things about those quotations that bother me. Firstly, obviously, he doesn’t want consequences in his life, ever. No one does. It’s also frustrating because the word ‘consequences’ is used in each of the three sentences, and those three sentences could’ve been one. Secondly, it’s the fact that he thinks about how he doesn’t want “one” badly enough. “One”, as if she’s a dog that he doesn’t want to clean up after, or a car that’s a bit too expensive to justify? I think that’s disgusting, and that kind of behaviour isn’t because of war trauma, it’s because of his own toxic mindset towards women. Also, I don’t want to hear how it’s not his fault that society is that way, because he’s <\/span>part<\/span><\/i> of society, and he’s <\/span>making<\/span><\/i> it that way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Krebs has problems with his emotions after the war, which is understandable, especially when his desire to talk about his experiences is brushed away by people who feel uncomfortable about <\/span>his<\/span><\/i> life. I would feel frustrated if I were dismissed like this, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

His family expects him to go back to normal when he returns, and they want him to get a job (ll. 173-175). Which is quite an assumption for them to make about his state of mind when they haven’t spoken to him about the war. But then Krebs tells his mother that he doesn’t love her, then takes it back, and later thinks that his mother forced him to lie to her, “He had felt sorry for his mother and she had made him lie.” (l. 205).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Overall, Krebs is not a character I like, which makes it hard to read the short story. I wish <\/span>Soldier’s Home<\/span><\/i> included more of Krebs’ experiences during the war and not just his feelings of clarity about his role, and more redeemable actions from Krebs. At the end of the story, nothing he thinks or does changes his connections to others or him as a character. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn’t like Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway. I don’t know how to feel about our main character, Krebs. On one hand, he’s just a guy who became a Marine and fought in the war. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wwi-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17100"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17119,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17100\/revisions\/17119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}