"(Hemingway, 303) Not only did the experience of the war change and affect him in a total way, but, when he returns home, the war becomes an obstacle impossible to surmount in the way of his new life because he is forced to lie about it and about his actual experiences and feelings. We intimate from his indirectly given thoughts, that after the war, everyone taking part in it was in the habit of forging unreal stories, most of them regarding heroism and what the author terms "atrocities." The only thing that he can coherently say about his experience is that he was horribly frightened all the time, "badly, sickeningly frightened all the time," as he tells himself (Hemingway, 303).
Hemingway's short story announces its theme already in the title: the phrase "soldier's home" is a very suggestive linguistic construction. However, the phrase in the title implies more than that- "soldier's home" is a hint at the actual state of things in the story: Krebs did come home...
He is obviously divided between this world that is supposed to be his own, and his soldier world, the world of the war.
The opposition that Hemingway makes between the two words- "atrocities" and "actualities" plainly unveils the post-war general state of mind: people felt the need to lie about the war, and to concoct numberless fantastic war stories, which had nothing to do with the actual war, with actual and real fear. Somehow, everyone who had been in the war felt that the atrocities were easier to bear and easier to tell and understand. The other men who had not participated in the war understood even less about the true feeling of naked fear and true horror that Harold avows.
Works Cited
Hemingway, Ernest. Collected Stories.
