“Suddenly our master marksman collapsed, shot through the
head. Although his brains were running down his face to his chin, he was still
fully conscious as we carried him to an adjoining tunnel” (Junger qtd. In.
Eksteins 152). I was reading an excerpt from Modris Eksteins’ Rites of Spring, which I found to be
extremely graphic and yet I found myself unable to put it down. In chapter four, titled “Rites of War”,
Eksteins describes the frontline soldier during The Great War, more modernly
known as World War I. The extremely graphic descriptions of the atrocious acts
witnessed during this war described by Eksteins provides a background on which
to understand the main character, a returning WWI soldier, in Ernest
Hemingway’s short story “Soldiers Home.”
At first glance Rites
of Spring and “Soldiers Home” may seem like two separate topics that may be
related in a vague sense however, when I began to dive deeper and analyze the
two with respect to each other I found that they improved my understanding of
what a soldier experiences and why they experience it when they return home.
“Soldier’s Home” centers on Harold Krebs’ return from fighting in World War I,
only to find that society had changed and despite his attempts to construct a
pattern in his life, his parents forced him to put up wall in their
relationship. His parents wanted him to be like his peers, successful and
engaged, when he had not yet been able to move on from his experiences in the
war. The reader could conclude many things from this soldier’s unwillingness to
integrate back into civilian life and resume a normal adulthood. However, when
the reader acknowledges what Krebs has seen and done in World War I through
personal experience, storytelling, or in my case, the graphic descriptions
provided in “Rites of War,” we are forced to see him in a sympathetic light. I
can only imagine the horror of attempting to save a comrades life only to
remove a headless body from a pile of rubble. The reader must feel sympathetic
towards Krebs even though we don’t know any specifics about what he saw or did
in the war.
The theme that I have struggled to wrap my head around is
the idea that during World War I human lives were not cherished or even
respected. Eksteins quoted the American ambassador in London as saying “when
there’s ‘nothing to report’ from France, that means the regular 5,000
casualties that happen every day” (155). This number is so large and shocking
that I almost didn’t believe it. However, if you do some research and see that
8.5 million men lost their lives during WWI. I find even more shocking that the
men themselves became so numb to the horrendous sights and experiences that
they were un-phased when a mangled body landed next to them. Really grasping
what these soldiers experienced is crucial in understanding that Krebs is not
withdrawing from society or being a bum. He is merely responding to a situation
that he was most likely forced into via the draft. The sights he saw and
society’s inability to listen when he needed someone to listen to him resulted
in his inability and lack of desire to resume his role within society.
As a society I think we need to be more understanding and
supportive of what our service men and women go through. Without providing support
to reintegrate them within society at a reasonable rate we as a society are abandoning
them and ultimately hurting society as a whole.
Works Cited
Eksteins, Modris.
Rites of Spring. New York: Houghton
Mifflin Company. Print.
Hemingway,
Ernest. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Scribner,
1987. Print.
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