Internal Conflict In Soldier's Home

The story “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemmingway depicts the wounding and post-traumatic experience of the First World War of the main character Harold Krebs and his family. Like most soldiers’ experience of the war, upon return to their lives back home, their lives virtually had no more meaning to them. Krebs presents a painful realization in this manner in which he interacts with his mother. She tries to think of her son as a hero and make him feel like one by encouraging him to re-tell his tales from the war. Krebs knows that the impressions his mother is making are not authentic and she, just like the rest of his fellow town folk are tired of hearing and reading the same stories from the war (De Baerdemaeker 24). Hemingway uses the story to painfully highlight the internal conflict that leaves an individual veteran like Krebs questioning his peculiar heroic status after fighting in the war. The protagonist of the short story, Krebs, is drafted by the state into the U.S. Army fighting in Rhineland having been uprooted from his home. The character traits of Krebs can be defined as rebellious, detached, and stressful. The creation of the character Krebs has been the epitome in the realization of the devastating

This also informs of the internal conflict of loved ones such as Krebs mother and even returnee soldiers themselves. The use of the theme of conformity by Hemmingway paints a picture of stark differences that bring out conflicts to the central character Krebs. Readers are also informed by the difficulty of adapting to conflicting social norms such as religion and marriage that most people fit into. Krebs truly knows that he has been traumatized by the war, and even the conformity of family and religion cannot seem to understand that the best way for him to conform is taking no responsibilities and consequences such as those of