A Metaphor for Deaths and Destruction in the Field of Life and Creation - Research Paper Example

Introduction Earnest Hemingway’s short story “Soldier’s Home” deals with the ennui of a young soldier, Harold Krebs, upon his return to his hometown from the World War I. The narrator goes on telling Krebs’s existential boredom and absurdity that he feels in his hometown after he returns from the war, as Laurence W. Mazzeno says, “The overriding atmosphere of this story is one of pessimism, almost defeatism without hint of defiance--a rather unusual stance for Hemingway” (2). Such simplistic narration of what Krebs feels ultimately reveals nothing about how Krebs’s ennui is connected to the existential awareness of death, since the story itself does not yield any direct references to death. Indeed, the artistic excellence of Hemingway’s writing style seems to lie in his economy of diction and his ability to highly figurative language. Though in the story, ‘death’ as a theme is a complicated one to be explored from an existential perspective, Hemingway’s narrative technique and style renders death as a nascent idea in his story. Krebs’s Ennui Induced by the Awareness of Death Hemingway’s protagonist, Harold Krebs, live in a ‘death-in-life’ situation, which seems to be permeated with an implied awareness of death. Here the question that may arise is: “What is the source of Krebs’s awareness of death?” Indeed the question itself is superfluous, since, at the very beginning of the story, the author makes it clear that the protagonist is a soldier has recently returned from the war. Therefore, in the story, the imageries of ‘soldier’ and ‘war’ themselves are rich enough to be the ‘agent of death’ in a conventional sense. Traditionally, ‘war’ is considered as something in which a soldier’s heroism is to kill the enemies. In other words, ‘heroism in war’ means bringing death for others. In ‘Soldier’s Home’, Hemingway has not spent even a single line about Krebs’s so-called heroism as a soldier. The narrator simply tells that the heroisms that Krebs wants to tell other are mere ‘atrocities’: “His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities” (Hemingway 144). The ‘atrocity stories’ are the stories of killing bravely. But soon Krebs learns that the bravery to kill in a war is rather useless in his hometown where people are busy in their lives. So in order to “be listened” Krebs has to “lie, and after he had done this twice he, too, had a reaction against the war and against talking about it” (Hemingway 144). Such realization takes away the only solace that a soldier counts on after returning from a war. Though the ennui and pessimism in Krebs’s life seems to begin here, its real source lies in his participation in the war. On one hand, his identity as a soldier fails to bring him a status and recognition in the society. On the other hand, his status takes him close to death and destruction. Since as a solider he has participated in the destruction, he can no longer have any interest in life. He has seen death very closely. He has seen “German women found chained to machine-gun in the Argonne forest” (Hemingway 144). Indeed Krebs’s perception about death as the ultimate truth of human life makes him so disinterested in life. Krebs’s Disinterestedness in life: A Consequence of Trauma in War Krebs is affected with a type of inertia and ennui. Since he had been an agent of destruction and death, he feels the fatigue in creation as well as life. He cannot pray because he believes that god does not exist. The idea of God is one of the humanly affairs in life. He cannot love any girls; he cannot even love his mother. For him, love is meaningless, as life itself is as meaningless as death. A sense of nothingness, though it is subtle, pervades Krebs psychology. Such existential nothingness or meaninglessness is vividly evident in Hemingway’s other stories also. In the story, A Clean, well-Lighted Place, the narrator expresses Hemingway’s concern about such nihilism: “What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too….Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.” (Hemingway 88) Though the narrator does not tell clearly anything about the origin of Krebs’s sense of nothingness, an analysis from an existentialistic point of view will necessarily find that Krebs’s sense of meaninglessness essentially originates from his experiences of death and destruction in the war. In an article “Hemingway and the Future of Nihilism” Chris R Tame comments in this regard, I termed Hemingway’s sense of life quasi-nihilistic, for there is some vague concept of metaphysical value present….If the world is unmistakably one of meaningless suffering and death, then one can — in the Hemingway worldview — at least maintain in the face of it a certain self-control and detachment. (Tame 2) Pessimism of Krebs and His Experiences of Death and Destruction The ‘Soldier’s Home’ is endowed with an overriding tone of pessimism. Harold Krebs wants to achieve a social recognition and an identity, in his hometown, by manipulating his status a soldier. But when he fails to draw others’ attention, he starts to devise false stories of heroism. Still he fails. Though he is a hero in the war, a metaphor for deaths and destruction, he is continually being defeated in the field of life and creation. He is affected with fatigue which he acquires from the war. As a soldier, he has faced an excess of ‘consequences’: “He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without consequences” (Hemingway 146). So he does not want any more of it. Here the ‘consequence’ is a metonymy for the feuds or conflicts whose ultimate result is destruction and death. Krebs is tired of the war, the deaths, the destructions, the feuds and, after all, the consequences. As Lamb points out, “The shadow that renders Krebs incapable of action and that lies at the crux of the story…His desire to avoid consequences is his single overriding motivation” (Lamb 18). In other words, he is tired of life itself. So he fears to even woo a girl, as the narrator says, “Nothing was changed in the town…But [the young girl] lived in such a complicated world of already defined alliances and shifting feuds that Krebs did not feel the energy or the courage to break into it” (Hemingway 145). He is tired of playing his role in life. So he prefers looking life aloof, as the narrator says, “He liked to look at them, though. There were so many good-looking young girls. Most of them had their hair cut short…He liked to look…” (Hemingway 144) Indeed, Krebs himself represents death in life. Conclusion Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” deals with the pessimism of a veteran of World War I, Krebs. Though the story has no direct reference to death or destruction, Krebs’s pessimism impliedly has a strong connection with the war he has fought. Hemingway figuratively uses ‘war’ as a traditional metaphor for death. Moreover, the ‘war’ appears in the story as the destruction of social values and respects. Krebs cannot pray because he, no more, believes in god. He cannot love his mother, his respect for social values has been destroyed, as Tateo Imamura says, “Krebs' small-town mother cannot comprehend her son's struggles and sufferings caused by the war. She devotes herself to her religion and never questions her own values” (Imamura 102). Being shred off its values life, for Krebs, turned into a continuum of summated fade time-matrixes, which is passed away idly, as Krebs “plays pool, practiced on his clarinet, strolled down town, read, and went to bed” (Hemingway 146). . Works Cited Hemingway, Ernest. "Soldier's Home", Ernest Hemingway: The Short Stories. New York, NY : Scribner Paperback Fiction Edition, 1995. Hemingway, Ernest. “A Clean, well-Lighted Place”, Ernest Hemingway: The Short Stories. New York, NY : Scribner Paperback Fiction Edition, 1995. Imamura, Tateo. "'Soldier's Home:' Another Story of a Broken Heart." (1996). The Hemingway Review, Vol. 16, No. 1, Fall, pp. 102. Lamb, Robert Paul Lamb. "The Love Song of Harold Krebs." (1995). The Hemingway Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, Spring, pp. 18. Mazzeno, Laurence W.” Ernest Hemingway”, 18 november, 2012. Available at http://salempress.com/store/samples/short_story_writers_rev/short_story_writers_hemingway.htm Tame, Chris R. “Hemingway and the Future of Nihilism”, 18 november, 2012. Available at http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/cultn/cultn001.pdf Read More