{"id":17126,"date":"2025-11-17T19:22:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T03:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/?p=17126"},"modified":"2025-11-19T14:14:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T22:14:22","slug":"personal-response-soldiers-home-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/personal-response-soldiers-home-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal Response – “Soldier’s Home”"},"content":{"rendered":"

After reading Soldier\u2019s Home<\/em>,\u00a0I felt like Krebs is someone who\u2019s completely disconnected not because he wants to be, but because he hasn\u2019t found anyone who feels like his person. He is surrounded by people who expect things from him but don\u2019t actually understand him, so of course he doesn\u2019t feel love or attachment. You can\u2019t feel gravitated toward a life that doesn\u2019t match who you’ve become.<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea of him \u201chaving to lie\u201d about his experiences just so people would listen (l. 34) made me think about how sometimes people want stories more than they want truth. If your life doesn\u2019t fit the dramatic version they are expecting, it can be a \u201clet down\u201d and uninteresting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the part I connected to most was when Krebs admits he \u201cdid not love anybody\u201d (l. 100). <\/span>I don\u2019t relate to that personally, I do love people in my life, although, it made me think. I don\u2019t think Krebs is incapable of love, it just seems like he hasn\u2019t found the right kind of connection since coming home. Instead of reading him as being cold, I started thinking about how love doesn\u2019t just appear when your life feels empty or out of place. He\u2019s not drawn to relationships because nothing around him feels real or meaningful enough to hold onto. When you\u2019re surrounded by people who can\u2019t understand what you\u2019ve been through, it\u2019s hard to feel anything that is deep or could be long-lasting.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the end of the story, Krebs\u2019 mother wanted him to pray, to take responsibility, and to slip back into the version of himself that existed before the war. Obviously Krebs can\u2019t pretend to be that version of himself anymore, he\u2019s changed mentally, physically, and emotionally. In my eyes, it seemed like Krebs’ mother wanted to enforce a facade of mental stability, when Krebs was struggling.<\/span><\/p>\n

Overall, the story made me think about how complicated it is to come home and realize your old life doesn\u2019t fit anymore, and how love can\u2019t grow when you haven\u2019t found the right person or the right place for it to land. However, when you do find the right person, love stops feeling like you’re being pressured, and starts to feel like something you truly want.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After reading Soldier\u2019s Home,\u00a0I felt like Krebs is someone who\u2019s completely disconnected not because he wants to be, but because he hasn\u2019t found anyone who feels like his person. He is surrounded by people who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wwi-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17126","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\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17126"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17155,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17126\/revisions\/17155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericmacknight.com\/english10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}