"Soldier's Home" by Ernest Hemingway is the story of a soldier's homecoming from World War I and how he is psychologically scarred by his experiences. Harold Krebs is the main character and the story charts his integration with his past life. Like Hemingway, his character Harold Krebs did no fighting in the war, but told people outrageous stories of heroism upon his return. Hemingway waited six years before writing this confessional story because his changing life, a new baby and growing fame, was weighing more and more heavily on him. The temporary happiness he achieved through his fabricated war stories had ended. In 1924, Ernest Hemingway wrote six stories about Nick Adams and one about Harold Krebs. These Nick stories make up the heart of the Adams chronology, ranging from early childhood in "Indian Camp" and "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," through adolescence in "The End of Something" and "The Three-Day Blow" up to the returned veteran in "Big Two-hearted River,' and culminating with the married Nick, whose wife is pregnant in "Cross Country Snow." At no other time in his career did Hemingway immerse himself so completely in the creation of Nick Adams. While taking himself through an 11-month journey with Nick, Hemingway for some reason digressed into his only fictional visit to Oklahoma, to which Harold Krebs of "Soldier's Home" has returned after serving in the Marines in France and Germany during and immediately after World War I. The primary purpose of this essay is to try to determine why for this one story Hemingway set Nick aside and created Krebs.
The short story, 'Soldier's Home,' provides a good example of Ernest Hemingway's technique for eliciting inferences from the reader by omitting critical details from the narrative. Harold Krebs, the story's soldier protagonist, is reluctant to talk to local girls after returning from World War I. The reason for his defensiveness is never explicitly given. Instead, Hemingway drops hints leading the...