Harold Being In The War example essay topic

Characters of all kinds have different lives and personalities that can shape them for who they are. These factors can affect their motivation, influences, and conflicts that happen upon in their lives. In the short story, "Soldier's Home" Ernest Hemingway gives us a WWI veteran, Harold Krebs, who has just come back from the war however, his influences and conflicts from the war have changed him from whom he used to be before the war. Harold Krebs, only recently returned from World War I, has moved back into his parents' house, while trying to figure out what he plans on doing with the rest of his life.

However, a few of his local soldier buds, in the war, had been at home years before he got his chance to settle himself back home. Later upon his arrival back home, Harold had felt the need to talk, but no one at that time wanted to hear about it. Apparently the town had heard too many atrocity stories already to be thrilled by actualities. With all of the war stories told, from every situation known possible during the war, Krebs finds that to be listened to, all that he has to do is lie. As time goes by with Krebs telling his untruthful stories twice, he too has a negative reaction against the war and against talking about it. But with Harold, the situation is more dramatic because in the war he had not only been living on his own, but had to deal with his traumatizing life-and-death situations that his parents could not possibly ever understand.

Therefore, Harold feels the need to keep the truth from being exposed and the need to keep it all to himself, being less expressive and social to people. As time goes by, with Harold adjusting back to his town and his old ways of living Hagood Pg. 2 in the town, Harold begins to fall behind with acceptance. The problem, of course, has to do with Harold's definition of who he has become. He recognizes he has changed, and plays it dramatically against his old idea of his town, where nothing else has changed since he was in high school. His father, parking the car in the same place, the girls walking down the street, looking like the same girls, except now, with more of them having short hair, were some of the backdrops of what he had in mind before he left off to war.

With these changes, Harold begins to have a hard time adjusting himself back to the way things were before he went off to war. While imagining Harold, looking across the street at these girls, one gets the sense while reading a, Soldier's Home, that watching these girls would be a healing process. Krebs admires the girls, yet he protects himself from the danger of sexual involvement as if he were still suffering from a previous affair. With this, we can begin to get the sense of Harold loosing his love towards people. Harold's motivation with him loosing his love to people, comes from the many years of being in the war.

With Harold being in the war for so long, away from his loved one, with not much time to think of them, had begun to loose the feeling and expression of love. We can begin to see his lose for wanting and expressing love when Harold's his mom asked him if he loves her. With not taking any time to think about her question, Harold quickly responds with "no". With this being said, we can begin to see how Harold has lost his expression for love.

However, Harold catches himself by saying how he didn't mean for what he said about not loving her. Meanwhile, as his mother begins to cry and feel the lose of her sons love, Harold come up with saying how he didn't mean what he Hagood Pg. 3 said about not loving her. While inside, Harold has forgotten, with being in the war, what love is and how to truly express it. In the short story Soldier's Home, Harold Krebs, is faced with many challenges from, avoiding the truth, to the acceptance of the towns changes, to him loosing the need and expression of love. Through the years of being in the war, influences, and conflicts have all played a key role in Krebs arrival back home. N / A.