Modernity and Hemmingway

Mass culture, consumerism, and modernity
“The Soldier’s Home” presents a struggle against the general concept of mass culture, consumerism, and modernity through Krebs’ attitude and actions upon his return home from the war which suggest a refusal and rejection of living in society’s world. The first two paragraphs serve as a reference to the comparison that Hemingway makes throughout the story between Krebs’ place and understanding of the world before the war and the new attitude that he adopts after the war. Before the war Krebs was a part of the mass culture society. The first paragraph explains that he went to a Methodist college and was part of a fraternity, “all of them wearing exactly the same height and style collar”(69), which suggests a certain conformity associated with modernity and mass culture. But once Krebs goes to the war he develops a new perspective of the society he lives in. The second paragraph suggests this idea. The way “Krebs and the corporal...