In Hemingway’s “A Soldiers Home” it is extremely obvious that the experience as a soldier in a major war like World War I changed not only how Krebs viewed the world but who he was down to his very feelings and perceptions of society. When looking at the following passage “..when he occasionally met another man who had really been a soldier and they talked a few minutes in the dressing room at a dance he fell into the easy pose of the old soldier among other soldiers ..”(Meyer, 188) Krebs can be understood to have looked at soldiers as a different class of people and to be treated differently and acted differently around. That is of course just the tip of the iceberg as far as the effects that war had on Krebs.
Hemingway was careful to point out that “nothing in town had changed except that the young girls had grown up.” (Meyer, 188) It seems that although everything looks the same in town Krebs has changed. He has become more solitary not interested in putting the effort in getting a girl. He would like to have one but does not want to have to work to get her. One could argue that this was a sense of entitlement. (Meyer, 188) As though Krebs thought “I fought for this country and I deserve to be respected and sought after.” Hemingway makes it clear that this is not the case by stating that Krebs did not want any consequences. (Meyer, 188) Krebs doesn’t feel entitled he feels that the complications would be too much of a burden. He would have to worry about the repercussions of his actions and he didn’t want to live that way anymore.
Krebs’s first interaction with his mother in his bedroom shows that not only has the war changed Krebs directly but it has also changed the way people view and treat him. Hemingway stated early on in the story that before he left Krebs was never allowed to take out the family car. (Meyer,188) The very first thing that his mother addresses is that his parents want him to be able to use the car. Most people in this...