Helen Character Analysis

Helen is one of Krebs’s two sisters, though he admits that she is the one he likes best. She is the only character in the story to whom Krebs responds with some positivity. When Helen asks whether he will always love her, for example, Krebs says, “Sure.” She also teases him and calls him by a nickname, and, in this way, represents a certain joyfulness and youth—qualities that seem to appeal to Krebs. Indeed, at one point Helen tells him, “If you loved me, you’d want to come over and watch me play indoor [baseball],” and at the end of the story Krebs decides to do just that. This reaffirms his love for and loyalty to Helen, and also restores some hope in Krebs’s somewhat bleak emotional situation. At the same time, however, the gesture is small, and associated with Helen’s own naiveté about what love is. By playing baseball, Helen also represents a certain intersection of female and male gender expectations. That Helen plays baseball and pitches better than the boys blurs the line between masculinity and femininity. Though Hemingway’s characters often reflect rigid, sexist ideas, the author also, at times, gestures towards the transcendence of these boundaries through female characters like Helen.