Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Literature Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words
Literature - Essay Example In other stories, particularly children’s books, setting hardly plays any role at all. The setting of three short stories – Ernest Hemingway's Soldier's Home, Colette's The Hand and Katherine Mansfield's Miss Brill – will be discussed in this essay. I will look at the public and private aspects of each setting to show that even when setting is not integral to the plot, it can reveal important truths about the characters.              Soldier's Home, from its very title, alerts us to the setting of the story (Meyer). However, it is not so much the physical positioning of the story that the title refers to as a genuine philosophical question, which can be asked of anyone whose travels irrevocably change them, war or no war: when a person changes, how can their home still be good enough? The Hand, alternately, is one of those stories mentioned above in which the setting is almost irrelevant, as the action is a lmost entirely internal, externally restricted to the couple's bed. In Miss Brill, the protagonist focuses on and is enchanted by the setting. The three authors imbue their setting with different levels of importance: the seaside park features as a place of enjoyment in Miss Brill's routine, and her presence there directly causes the climax of the plot. Krebs' house in Soldier's Home exacerbates his feeling of despair without actually causing it; Colette's protagonist remains unaware of her physical surroundings as she focuses exclusively on her new husband's â€Å"monstrous†hand (reference). In each story there is a public setting and a private setting. This essay will define these settings for each story before contrasting the ways in which this literary device is used.              In 1925, Ernest Hemingway published a collection of short stories called In Our Time, one story of which was Soldier's Home. This story features Krebs, a young man who returns to America from World War I in 1919, a year after the war has ended and long after other local soldiers have returned home. He â€Å"did not want to leave Germany†(Hemingway), and now feels like an outsider. The public and private dichotomy of settings in Soldier's Home is complicated, because Krebs experiences degrees of privacy: in his bedroom, he admits to himself that â€Å"he did not really need a girl†; when on the front porch, he â€Å"liked to look at them†but when in town, â€Å"their appeal to him was not very strong†(Hemingway). In the privacy of his bedroom and the pool room, Krebs can escape the changes and simply be, thoughtlessly. In the public areas of his house and the local town, he must come face-to-face with manifestations of how the war changed him.              In the settings beyond his private bedroom, Krebs is unable to handle other pe ople, their needs and personalities. He is unable to participate in a romantic relationship because he â€Å"did not want any consequences†– the German and French girls, possibly prostitutes, with whom he fraternized in Europe characterize â€Å"simple†relationships (Hemingway). This crisis runs so deeply within him that, in the kitchen, he tells his mother that he does not love her, by which he means he cannot love anyone. The war has taken so much of him that he cannot deal with other people. Â
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