English
Written assignment
B.D 02-11-2004
Studieportalen.dk
By: Astrid Hougaard Pedersen 3.a
Soldier’s Home
Hemingway is a very famous writer in USA and through time he has written many interesting,
strong and unforgettable novels and short stories. Hemingway is characterized as one of the expatriot
authors also called the “lost generation”. Besides Hemingway, the “lost generation also
comprised F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Gertrud Stein. The whole idea that
formed the “lost generation” was the ideas that the ideals of patriotism that lured young people into
war, only to the profit of materialistic elders, were false ideals.
A war always causes victims. Victims in the everyday casualties of death, destruction and
mutilation, but in addition to these physical tolls the maybe more significant, far-reaching
psychological and emotional ramifications.
The title indicates that the story is about an old soldier living out the remnants of his life in some
kind of institution, telling us a story about his experiences. But soon it is revealed that the story is
about a young man, Harold Krebs, who is returning from World War I.
At the time he returns to his home town in Oklahoma 1919, the war has been over for about a year
or so and that implies that the salutation and celebrating of heroes is over, and no one is interested
in hearing about what he has experienced and been exposed to. At first, this doesn’t seem to bother
him; he doesn’t really want to talk about it. Gradually, however, he finds out that he needs to talk
about it, and then nobody wants to listen. Everybody seems to have heard too many stories of
atrocities to bother anymore. So he starts lying to get people’s attention, only even his lies seem to
bore people, and he himself becomes disgusted by the untruths and exaggerations he feels so
tempted to tell.
We learn that he has moved back into his parents’ house, a house that used to provide a nice,
comfortable,...