Soldier's Home
Essay by 24 • March 29, 2011 • 482 Words (2 Pages) • 1,188 Views
War is a terrible thing. It has confounding effects on everyone involved. Some people take it well, while others have such horrible experiences that it scares them for life and affects them even after the war when they return home. Ernest Hemingway's Soldier's Home and Tim O'Brien's How to Tell a True War Story are two great examples of literature that express' what any particular soldier can go through upon returning home. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is a very common sickness that soldiers come down with after returning from war. There are a few differences and similarities between the two stories; the way each soldier handles himself after the war and the way people look at each of the soldiers when they return home.
One of the most obvious differences between the two stories is how each soldier handles himself after the war. In Tim O'Brien's Soldier's Home, the narrator of the story uses story telling to convey his war experiences with everyone. He uses this method of telling stories, to blur the difference between truth and fiction, and also to hide the atrocities of war. This telling of stories is used to dance around the truth. It is also is a way of him making his transition back into his home's society and way of life that is completely different from what he is used to before he left, and now that he is home.
Now this is very different from how Krebs deals with war and coming home and dealing with people. He stays to him self and doesn't really go out or act the same
anymore. The war has really affected his social skills. Before the war Krebs was a normal kid. In a college fraternity and had a lot of friends. Being in the war really changed his personality. Krebs is probably suffering from a form of Post traumatic stress syndrome. In his eyes, no one will ever understand what hell he went through, so why bother talking to anyone about it. He came home
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