SSRJ #1- Hemingway

            My initial reaction to this story was how, although I have never been in war, this story is very similar to situations I, and many other people, have found themselves in. There have been several times in my life where I have been confused about what move to make next and how to do it. Having the sense of being confused or out of place is a familiar feeling for a lot of people.

            Hemingway uses the setting in this story to really set the tone for the feelings and struggles that Krebs was going. Throughout the story Hemingway flashes back and forth between Krebs’s life in the war and the life he finds upon his arrival back home from his service. When Krebs arrives home, things do not go according to his anticipations. “By the time Krebs returned to his home town in Oklahoma the greeting of heroes was over.” He realizes that he is too late for the party that had been thrown to those that arrived home first from the war. He found it hard to speak to anyone about his experiences in the war because he was not part of the first group to come home. “His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities.” This was hard for Krebs. He felt that in order to get attention he had to lie to people about his experiences because the rest of the soldiers had already told their own. The theme that Hemingway describes throughout the story is the hardship of a young man who doesn’t feel home when he returns home from a long departure. “Nothing was changed in the town except that the young girls had grown up.” He felt that this was the same place that he had left except he didn’t feel comfortable in his own home.

            Krebs also found a struggle in the fact that he had fought a war but many people grew negative feelings about the wars intentions. When he enlisted his intentions were good and he felt that he was serving a just cause but then he finds himself confused. “He sat on the porch reading a book on the war… now he was really learning about the war. He had been a good soldier. That made a difference.” He seems to read about things he hadn’t known before and quickly reassures himself that he had served a good cause. He finds himself in a dichotomy of the war and being home and the changes that did and didn’t take place when he left what he called home.

            Hemingway makes many references to Krebs’s struggles mentally after he returns home. What other elements of literature did Hemingway use to emphasize his hardships upon arriving home and his mental flashbacks to being in the war?