Jada Gray-Hernandez
1302.005
Prof C J Arevalo
17 April 2013
Research Essay
The Lost One “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway is a story of a young man, Harold Krebs, who returns home in the summer of 1919 after fighting in Germany during World War I. After being away at war for two years, Krebs returns to his hometown in Oklahoma but does not get the welcome that he was expecting. As he attempts to readjust to society he embellishes his war stories in an attempt to make them more interesting, but grows tired and nauseated by them instead. At home things are not as they had been; his sisters see him as a hero and his parents see him as a man that needs to move on with his life yet they still treat him like a child. Although Krebs has been to war and has aged he does not share his family’s outlook regarding himself; instead he feels lost and cold, detached from the life he once knew. Hemingway illustrates how a soldier returning from war returns to a life and a family they no longer know and to a world they no longer recognize. Hemingway expresses the difficulties of adapting back into civilian life after being away at war and the effects on a soldier as well as a soldiers family. When a soldier returns home, the welcome they receive often helps them to reconnect to the civilian world. The townspeople had previously greeted soldiers upon returning from the war, but when Harold Krebs arrives he quickly realizes that the “greeting of heroes was over” (Hemingway 253). He returns home much later than the other soldiers and the excitement to welcome local heroes had already came to an end. It is hard enough for soldiers returning home because “the return home is often stressful” (Ramsey). This is unfortunate for Krebs because “although most veterans did succeed in making the transition to ordinary civilian life, many did not,” and he is one of them (Sitikoff). A