Ernest Hemingway's "Soldier's Home" is a story of a soldier who returns from World War I as a transformed person. The story depicts his inability to fit back into the society. Krebs is at home but he doesn't feel at home. He is with family but he doesn't feel he belongs there. Like various authors Ernest Hemingway tried to portray his own life after he came back from war throughout the character of Harold Krebs. As much as Krebs believes in the truth, people around him force him to lie. The story precisely manifests the conflict between Krebs value, which has dramatically changed after his war experience and society expectation toward him to conform to its traditional values. Eventually to maintain his existence Krebs has to choose isolation by detaching himself from social relations, love, religion and ambition.
Ernest Hemingway explored the moments of his personal life and the same struggle he had experienced in his hometown after returning from World War I throughout Harold Krebs character. He stretched out his experience and emotion in Krebs personality, which illustrates the insights into his homecoming and his understanding of the dilemmas of the returned war veteran (Putnam, 2). After the war, in 1919 Hemingway returned to Oak Park for a brief stay at home and faced a difficult period of adjustment. According to Ernest's older sister, it must have been something like being put in a box with the cover nailed down to come home to conventional, suburban Oak Park living (Johnston,75). Mentally and physically hurt from his war wounds, Hemingway entered into an idle part of his life. Ernest didn't seem to know what he wanted to do with his life. As describing by his sister, Ernest seemed to be at loose ends (Johnston 75-76). Hemingway was later able to reflect his disgust of his home life when he purposely portrayed himself as the character of Harold Krebs. When Hemingway found the germ for the story in his family life, the artist would take over and as the actual people made into literary characters-rewrite the actual into something created and quite different from the original(westbrook,35).