The soldier in Ernest Hemingway s Soldier s Home h Essays

The soldier in Ernest Hemingway s Soldier s Home has finally returned home afterstaying in Europe after the war. He looked at many things around the town differently since hisreturn, especially the girls. The American girls Harold Krebs observes from the porch symbolizeshow he sees American society since his return and the foreign girls symbolize the society of theEuropean countries he just returned from.Harold Krebs was sent to Europe during the war. On the whole he had liked Germanybetter. He did not want to leave Germany (Hemingway 72). This is demonstrated through hisadmiration from far and dislike from near of American girls. The girls the soldier knew before hejoined the army were grown up when he returned from Europe. The people from the Europeancountries accepted him and made him feel at home. He fit in with the girls in Germany andFrance. There was not all this talking. You couldn t talk much and you did not need to talk. Itwas simple and you were friends (Hemingway 72). Bei ng in the army he was accepted by thepeople in Europe even though there was a speech barrier. He thought the overall appearance ofAmerica was better than the European countries but he enjoyed his stay in those countries better. He liked the look of them (American girls) much better than the French girls or the German girls. But the world they were in was not the world he was in (Hemingway 72). He thinks theAmerican girls are good looking and he liked to look at them from the front porch as theywalked on the other side of the street (Hemingway 71). The one thing he admired about theirappearance repeatedly was their Dutch collars. He was probably familiar and comfortable withthese from his time in Europe. When he saw the girls in town he did not like them. They weretoo complicated (Hemingway 71). Similarly, he liked the way America appeared when he wasaway from it and he noticed and admired the European influences. He was proud to be fromAmerica. But, he did not like America when he r eturned home. Things were too complicated. He had to change himself to fit in and even lie to make his stories interesting to the people. Heclaims He would have liked to have a girl... ...He did not want to have to do any courting (Hemingway 71). In the same way, he wanted to fit in with the people in his hometown but aslong as he did not have to put effort into it. He did not want to tell anymore lies (Hemingway71). Hemingway demonstrates the soldiers complications interacting with American societythrough Harold s discussions with his mother and sister. Both women are ideal Americanwomen: the mother was at home and cooked the meals and the younger daughter looked up toher older brother. His mother is the one who pressures Harold to settle down and do somethingwith his life just as society encourages boys, when they come back from war, to forget whathappened and live a normal life. The other woman in his life, his sister, needs total reassurancethroughout their conversation: Couldn t your brother really be your beau just because he s yourbrother? ... Sure you know. Couldn t you be my beau, Hare, if I was old enough and if youwanted to? ... Am I really your girl? ... Do you love me? ... Will you love me always? (Hemingway 74). As with the American girls, everyone Harold has talked to after the war has askedquestions but each answer was not good enough. The Europeans did not ask questions. Insteadthey accepted Harold for who he was, not for the exciting stories he could tell them.

The eNotes Blog National Book Critics Circle FinalistsAnnounced

National Book Critics Circle FinalistsAnnounced Its award season, not just for movies, but for books as well. Yesterday, the National Book Critics Circle announced its finalists for the 2012 publishing year.   Since 1976, the   National Book Critics Circle has given the award in order to promote the  finest books and reviews published in English.   The American organization has selected thirty books eligible for a total of six prizes.   Those six categories are  autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Two of the titles in contention have already received much critical and popular acclaim, Katherine Boos   Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.   and Billy Lynns Long Halftime Walk  Ã‚  by Ben Fountain Other Fiction Finalists: Laurent Binet’s  HHhH, about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich Zadie Smith’s London-set  NW Adam Johnson’s  The Orphan Master’s Son, a frightening look into  Kim Jong Il’s North Korea. (Both Fountain’s  Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and  Ã‚  Binet’s  HHhH  are first novels.) Biographies Robert A. Caro’s  The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson   Tom Reiss’s  The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo  , about General Dumas, father of the famous novelist Lisa Cohen’s  All We Know: Three Lives   about early 20th-century trend setters Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta and Madge Garland Lisa Jarnot’s  Robert Duncan,  The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography Autobiography My Poets  by  Maureen N. McLane Swimming Studies by  Leanne Shapton The Distance Between Us  by  Reyna Grande In the House of the Interpreter  by  NgÃ… ©gÄ © wa Thiong’o House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East  by  Anthony Shadid Poetry   Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations  by  David Ferry Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys  by  D. A. Powell Olives: Poems (Triquarterly)  by A.E. Stallings Non-fiction Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity  by Andrew Solomon Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic  by  David Quammen For a complete list of finalists, click here. The winners will be announced on  Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 6:00 p.m.