Character Analysis Of Harold Krebs In Soldier's Home

Throughout the story of Soldier’s Home, the main character, Harold Krebs, goes through a dynamic change. He starts out as a World War 1 veteran who recently returned home. He wants all the attention as he tells his war stories. He soon realizes that the people around him have lost interest in the stories from combat. He is determined to gain back the attention he thinks he deserves from making lies about the war. Krebs finds that not even his ludacris lies will get him the attention he desires. This shows a selfish side of Krebs. Krebs also is struggling with his luck with women after he comes back from the war. He notices that the women overseas were a lot different than the women in America. When he returned home he realized he had to socialize with women if he wanted to pursue them. Krebs finds himself lonely without a woman in his life. This shows the lonesome and depressed side of Krebs. Krebs has changed by the end of the story and it’s very clear that he is different. At the end of the end of the story, Krebs has a fall out with his mother.

Having this knowledge, Krebs still wants the attention from women when he returns. Krebs finds himself gawking at women, but he never finds the guts to go up and speak to them. He is antisocial with women and he does not know how to approach them. Krebs can never find the right words to say, so he chooses not to say anything at all. This leads him to be lonely. Krebs is used to the women overseas. With the women speaking different languages, he did not have to be creative with his words. He did not have to be kind or sweet to the women verbally. If he spoke to the women from the war they would not even know what he said. Between the rejection from his war stories and the rejection from women, Krebs begins to feel lonely and depressed. “He did not want them themselves really. They were too complicated.” Krebs was not