Comparing Loss of Self in Soldiers Home, Pauls Case, and Bartleby Essa

leaving of Self in Hemingways Soldiers Home, Cathers Pauls Case, and Melvilles Bartleby the Scrivener Hemingways Soldiers Home, Cathers Pauls Case, and Melvilles Bartleby the Scrivener all present a loss of self. These stories prove that there is a fine line amid finding ones self and losing ones self. I believe this loss can total at any age or station of life. This idea is seen in each storys main character. Hemingways Soldiers Home depicts a boylike man in his early twenties after his return from World War I. The young man, Krebs, has arrived home too late. Thus, he doesnt receive the adulation of the town as the differents did. This first loss was the beginning of a long inward travel for Krebs. His unwillingness, then inability, to discuss his part in the war with others immediately had an moment on Krebs. He was unable to get some form of closure, something which he direly needed. Due to the extravagant stories foretold by others, Krebs was forced to lie in coordinat e to fit in. These lies bothered Krebs. They not only went against him morally, but they also started to dismiss his observeings about the war A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war bent in because of the lies he had told. All the times that had been able to make him feel cool and clear inside himself when he thought of them....now disjointed their cool, semiprecious quality and then were lost themselves (224). Earl Rovit explains this even further stating, if he cant boldness in truth of these experiences, he will then have lost everything (255). These feelings that Krebs has are not unfamiliar. This situation is seen in a handful of other stories of the times, but Hemingways story delineates the desperate inc... ... 189-194. Cather, Willa. Pauls Case.The American sententious Story. Volume II. Ed. Calvin Skaggs. vernal York Dell, 1980160-180. Decker, Timothy. The Mechanization of a Scrivener. Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville. uniform res ource locator http//www.en.utexas.edu/daniel/amlit/bartleby/decker.html Hemingway, Ernest. Soldiers Home. The American Short Story. Volume I. Ed. Calvin Skaggs. raw York Dell, 1977 224-231. Hyzack,Greg. The Mentally Disturbed Scrivener. Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville. URL http//www.en.utexas.edu/daniel/amlit/bartleby/hyzakbart.html Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivener. The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston St. Martins, 1995 513-539. Rovit, Earl. On Ernest Hemingway and Soldiers Home. The American Short Story. Volume I. Ed. Calvin Skaggs. New York Dell, 1977 251-255.