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Essay / The Theme of Coming Home After War in Hemingway and O'brien's Short Stories
Sometimes the hardest part of a war is coming home. In the two short stories “Soldiers Home” by Ernest Hemingway and “Speaking of Courage” by Tim O'Brien, each of the characters Krebs and Berlin shows the difficulties they encounter for a soldier returning from war. Both characters illustrate how difficult it can be to adjust to a normal lifestyle compared to the life they led abroad or the life they led before leaving for war. However, each story differs depending on how they deal with the aftermath and who they confide in about the hardships of the war. In a "soldier's house", when Krebs returns home, he needs to talk to someone but doesn't know how to approach people about it. Whereas in "Speaking of Courage", Berlin has the choice to speak honestly about the difficulties and hardships of war, but he chooses not to because he does not want to upset anyone. Each of the characters exhibits forms of PTSD and explains how the war brought many difficulties into their lives upon their return home. Although the stories have many differences, they also share many similarities about the effects of war. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In a "Soldier's Home" by Ernest Hemingway, Before Krebs became a soldier he had a fairly normal life, he was in a fraternity where all the men involved wore the same type of shirt, in the same style. This showed that he had friends who accepted him and a healthy social life. When Krebs was at war, it was said that his fellow soldiers “looked too big for their uniforms.” The idea of "outgrowing" a uniform is a pattern we see consecutively throughout the novella. Krebs eventually, hypothetically speaking, outgrew his fraternity uniform when he went off to war. Where we see this pattern again is when Krebs is at war and he finally begins to outgrow his uniform and return home after the war. In the article “Where do we go from here?” by Trout, Steven explains how "it turned out that many former soldiers, including some of the war's most decorated, were not up to the challenge of re-entering civilian life without support, economic or otherwise." Krebs realized that once he returned to the civilian world and was left to his own devices, he would not be able to truly discuss the causes of the war and his experiences. When Krebs came home from the war, that's when we started to see how much more isolated he was from those around him, this shows that he was affected by the war and what 'he saw. When he came back from the war, it was towards the end of the summer, he slept late in bed, he walked to the library, had lunch at home, he walked alone in town, then he passed the rest of the night in the billiard room. He spends most of his days alone, except for times when he sees his family. He also constantly remembers the things he saw while he was at war. PTSD has the effect of causing returning service members to ignore their previous social lives in an attempt to reduce the psychological effects of war. We also see this when Krebs wants to be associated with people, but he doesn't want to have to deal with the stress that comes with it because "here at home everything was too complicated" (Hemingway 168). After reading articles based on how Krebs felt upon returning from thewar, I came across an article that discussed in more detail his need to talk about the war. Krebs' feelings about war are constantly changing; in the article Soldiers' Voices in In Our Time: Hemingway's Ventriloquism by Milton A. Cohen, he speaks of "his compulsive need to talk to someone." Krebs is constantly looking for someone to listen to the war stories he has encountered, but because it was so late when he got home, everyone thought they had heard it all. As the story continues, we see a change in the way Krebs speaks to his sister compared to the way he speaks to his mother. Krebs has a new view of the world after being at war for so long that he has difficulty adjusting to his life at home and controlling what he says because he is afraid of losing those he love. As these scenes take place, it's painful to hear how hurt he is to the point of having to tell his own mother that he doesn't love her. In the article Performative Patterns in Hemingway's "Soldier's Home" by Ruben De Baerdemaeker, he explains how "Krebs disavows being in the Kingdom of God and emotionally distances himself from his mother and the world she represents." When Krebs tells his mother that he doesn't love her, he quickly realizes that what he said was an accident. Krebs knew what he said was wrong, and after saying that, he tries to give his reasons, but can't seem to come up with an exact answer. He then tries to say that what he said was a mistake and it went wrong. He couldn't explain that he didn't want to lose her, so he was trying to express himself to seek to keep her out of his life because he feels damaged. Psychologically, Krebs has changed because of the war and he is trying to get used to his social environment, which is now different and complicated. We also find these similarities in “Speaking of Courage” where the main character Norman Bowker has difficulty behaving. time to adjust to a normal life after returning from the war. This can be seen when he "followed the asphalt road on its seven-mile loop around the lake, then started all over again, driving slowly" (Tim O'Brien). Norman realizes that he has nowhere to go at this point and begins to drive and reminisce about his days before the war. Bowker wants to talk to someone about what happened to him during the war, but he has no one to talk to about anything. He also thinks about the conversations he would have with people about what happened, about the medals he was awarded, but he also wanted to tell them that he was a coward, that he was not brave. In the article Tim O'Brien and the Art of Timmerman's True War Story, John H. explains in detail that if people had listened to Bowker, "people would have heard, if only they had listened it was Norman Bowker's story of he had courage, of how he almost saved his friend Kiowa, except for the terrible shipwreck on the field. His father was the appropriate person to initiate the hearing, because his father also knew the truth about the war.” Norman struggles to accept what has happened to him, all the changes that have happened to him in the city. He cannot accept the fact that what happened to his friend was purely an accident and that if he had stayed he would have left too, that he deserved all the medals he received in the war. Bowker is clearly in a state of stress that causes him to constantly return to the incident with his friend, this is what we call PTSD. A study was done, published online September 17 in JAMA Psychiatry, which posits the theory that PTSD can cause apathy and emotional detachment. What we see in..