Home After The War Krebs example essay topic

The short story, "Soldier's Home", by Ernest Hemingway proves to us that the setting someone lives in usually influences theme of a story. This story goes into a time when things were much different than today and society wasn't as unpredictable as it seems this day in age. In one sense we can see this young man's whole life being over at the early age of 19, stuck with having to repeat the same cycle day after day. As the reader, I could easily see that this young man's life is being predetermined and that it's all happening over the course of a couple months. Life today is much different, as to say that our lives aren't as unanticipated as they once were long ago. In this story there are certain occurrences, which you can point out, that show us that this young man feels his life is going a lot faster than he would have wished for.

In the first few pages when Krebs describes being in the war, he almost is telling the reader he is having the time of his life. The author made it seem as though after re-visiting home after the war Krebs reflected and almost flat out told us he would rather be back in Germany. Being at home, Krebs felt he had to lie to fit in, while at the war he was a hero just for being there, which he didn't think would change when he came home. Krebs would rather turn back the hand of time than move forward. Then later on in the story Krebs parents ask him to get a job, because to them it doesn't seem right that after all this time back he is still just staying at home.

Krebs parents clearly believe that he isn't doing much with himself and they just want more out life for him than just staying at home for the rest of his life with no job and no wife. This story also shows instances of people's lives during this time must have felt relatively short compared to people's thoughts today on their lives. An example of this is when Krebs mother tries to have a heart-to-heart discussion with him about going out of the house and making a life of his own. Instead of just wanting him to get a job, his mother also asks of him when he's going to settle down and get married.

I wouldn't doubt that in the early 1900's this was a common practice. That is to get married at such a young age. Today though marriage is something that takes a little more time to get into and people don't usually get married until they are in their late twenties maybe even in their thirties or older. Life in this time was almost planned out for you from birth.

It was a tight path that you had to walk with no wandering off. You get to a certain age and you must get married and have kids. Today, as stated before, not everything is straightforward and strict as it once was. Now people get married and work when they choose. I can only assume that over time people realized that predetermining someone's life makes life undesirable. Overall, this short story shows its reader that the time period of a story reflects on how the story is to be told, in turn its theme.

With this story we can clearly see that in the time period it occurs, the early 1900's, life felt a lot shorter lived than it seems to people today. The story goes in depth to show countless accounts of time going too fast in the eyes of a young man. This man, as anyone else in his shoes, felt coming home after a war in which he fought that he should be accepted and greeted with warmth. To all of our dismay this was not the case. He had to lie to be recognized with the society he lived in. This almost proves to us that not everything you do, whether great or small, will always be accounted for by everyone and accepted as a good thing overall.