Sometimes the hardest part of going to war is coming home. In the two short stories “Soldiers Home” by Ernest Hemingway and “Speaking of Courage” by Tim O'Brien, each of the characters Krebs and Berlin shows the difficulties encountered by a soldier returning home from war. Both characters illustrate how difficult it can be to adjust to a normal lifestyle compared to the life they led abroad or the one they had before leaving for war. However, each story differs when considering how they deal with the consequences and who they confide in about the hardships of war. In “Soldier's Home,” when Krebs comes home, he has this need to talk to someone but he doesn't know how to approach people about it. While in “Speaking of Courage” Berlin has the chance to speak honestly about the trials and tribulations of war, but chooses not to because he doesn't want to bother anyone. Each of the characters shows forms of PTSD and how the war put many difficulties in their lives when they returned home. While the stories have many differences, they also share many similarities regarding the effects of war. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayIn a "Soldier's House" by Ernest Hemingway, before Krebs became a soldier, he had a pretty normal life, he was in a fraternity where all the men involved wore the same type of shirt and the same style. With this he demonstrated that he had accepting friends and a healthy social life. When Krebs was at war it was discussed that fellow soldiers “looked too big for their uniforms.” The idea of ​​"growing up" for a uniform is a pattern we see consecutively throughout the story. Krebs eventually, hypothetically speaking, outgrew his uniform in the fraternity when he went to war. Where we see this pattern again is when Krebs is at war and eventually starts to outgrow his uniform and returns home from the war. In the article “Where do we go from here? of Trout, Steven talks about how “it turned out that many former soldiers, including some of the war's most decorated, were not up to the challenge of reentering civilian life without support, financial or otherwise.” Krebs realized that once he returned to the civilian world where he was alone, he would not be able to truly discuss the causality of the war and the experiences he had lived through. When Krebs came home from the war, that's when we started to see how he was more isolated with those around him, this shows that he was affected by the war and what he saw. When he came home from the war it was towards the end of the summer, he would sleep late in bed, go to the library, have lunch at home, wander around town alone and then spend the rest of the night in the billiard room. He spends most of his days alone, with the exception of the time he sees his family. He also constantly reminds himself of the things he saw while he was at war. Post-traumatic stress disorder has the effect of causing soldiers to ignore their previous social lives to try to limit the psychological effects of war. We also see this when Krebs wants to be associated with people, but doesn't want to deal with the stress that comes with it because "everything was too complicated here at home" (Hemingway 168). After reviewing articles based on how Krebs felt upon returning home from the war, he came across the article that further discussed his need to talk about the war. Krebs' feelings about the war are constantly changing, in the article Soldiers'Voices in In Our TIME: Hemingway's Ventriloquism by Milton A. Cohen, referred to as "his compulsive need to talk to someone." Krebs is constantly looking for someone to listen to the war stories he encountered, but because it was so late when he returned home everyone thought they had heard everything. As the story continues we notice a change in the way Krebs speaks to his sister compared to how he speaks to his mother. Krebs has a new view of the world after being at war for so long that he has difficulty adjusting to his life at home and has difficulty controlling what he says because he is afraid of losing those he loves. As these scenes unfold it is painful to hear how hurt he is to the point of having to tell his mother that he doesn't love her. In the article Performative Patterns in Hemingway's “Soldier's Home” by Ruben De Baerdemaeker, he discusses how “Krebs denies being in the Kingdom of God and distances himself emotionally from his mother and the world she represents.” When Krebs tells his mother that he doesn't love her, she quickly realizes that what he said was an accident. Krebs knew that what he said was wrong, and after saying it, he tries to motivate himself but can't find an exact answer. Then he tries to say that what he said was a mistake and that it came out the wrong way. He couldn't explain that he didn't want to lose her, so he was trying to express himself to try to keep her away from his life because he felt damaged. Psychologically Krebs has changed due to the war and tries to get used to his social environment, which is now different and complicated for him. We also see these similarities in "Speaking of Courage", where the main character Norman Bowker has a hard time adjusting to a normal life even after returning home from the war. We can see this when he “followed the paved road on his seven-mile loop around the lake, then started all over again, driving slowly” (Tim O'Brien). Norman realizes that at this point he has nowhere to go and begins driving and reminiscing about his days before the war. Bowker wants to talk to someone about what happened to him in the war, but he has no one to talk to about anything. He also thinks about the conversations he would have had with people about what had happened, about the medals they had awarded him, but he would also have wanted to tell them that he was a coward, that he wasn't brave. In the article Tim O'Brien and the Art of the True War Story by Timmerman, John H. goes into detail about how if people had listened to Bowker “people would have heard, if they had only listened, it was Norman Bowker's story of he had courage, how he almost saved his Kiowa friend, except the terrible shipwreck in the camp. His father was the best person to start the hearing, because his father also knew the truth of the war.” Norman has a hard time accepting what happened to him, all the changes that happened to him in the city. He can't accept the fact that what happened to his friend was a pure accident and that if he had stayed he would have left too, that he would have deserved all the medals he received in the war. Bowker is clearly in a stressful state of mind which causes him to constantly revisit the incident that happened with his friend, otherwise known as PTSD. A study was produced, published online September 17 in JAMA Psychiatry, which led to the theory that PTSD can cause listlessness and emotional detachment. Which we see in both characters of the two stories. Krebs and Bowker each have difficulty adjusting to life outside the war; they have difficulty adapting to the lifestyle they knew before, which leads them to want to be alone most of the time.