26 pages • 52 minutes read
Ernest HemingwaySoldier's Home
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Maps
The narrator says that Harold “looked forward with a good feeling to reading all the really good histories when they would come out with good detailed maps” (113). The passage conveys how lost Harold is, and the maps symbolize Harold’s aimlessness and alienation. The maps speak to the theme of the Psychological Effects of War.
Rather than get a job and build a future for himself, Harold looks forward to reading more history books with maps in them, which appears to be a metaphor for Harold’s need for guidance and direction. By reading books about the past, over and over, and looking forward to reading books with maps in them, Hemingway portrays a man who can’t move forward because he is lost in his past.
The Krebs Family Car
The Krebs family car represents freedom, mobility, and direction—things that Harold lacks. Before the war, Harold was not allowed to drive the car. Harold’s father, a real estate agent, uses it to drive clients around and show them properties. After he returns home from the war, Harold’s mother tells him that his father has given his permission to take the car out on evenings. Hemingway writes, “Your father does not want to hamper your freedom. He thinks you should be allowed to drive the car. If you want to take some of the nice girls out riding with you, we are only too pleased. We want you to enjoy yourself. But you are going to have to settle down to work” (115). Harold’s father is a traditional father figure, and more broadly, a traditional man. He provides for his family, and as a result, makes the final decisions. The car reflects the story’s themes of masculinity and strength. Harold’s father has control while Harold is at the mercy of his parents. His lack of direction—and lack of ownership of a car—is perceived as weakness by his parents since it counters traditional conceptions of masculinity.
The Front Porch
Harold likes to spend time on his parents’ front porch, reading his books in isolation. Sometimes, he watches girls walk by on the opposite side of the street. Hemingway uses the front porch to illustrate Harold’s place in the world. Since returning from the war, he has become stagnant. He is a passive observer and often wanders aimlessly. Rather than get a job or meet a girl, he buries himself in his books. He lacks the strength to make conversation with a girl, and Hemingway cleverly uses the physical space of the front porch to comment on the themes of Masculinity and War and Postwar Generational Divides.
The front porch may be a sanctuary, as it protects Harold from the world, but it is also a physical divide that separates him from his family inside the house, and the girls on the other side of the street. The girls represent the chance to settle down and move on to the next stage of adulthood, and as Harold watches them walk by, he lets a potential future slip away. Ultimately, the front porch symbolizes Harold’s displacement.
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By Ernest Hemingway
