Soldier’s Home: Imagery 1 key example

Krebs is also later described as feeling "sick and vaguely nauseated" post-lying, albeit no longer about the war specifically. The description of such a visceral, physical feeling conveys the distress Krebs experiences in his daily post-war life, as he is provoked to dishonesty and its concomitant nausea with some frequency throughout the short story. Although not one of the standard five senses typically invoked in imagery, Hemingway's description of feeling sick ties the mental and emotional anguish that Krebs experiences in his post-war life to a tangible, physical sensation—one most readers can easily relate to. Within the context of Hemingway's prose, which describes feelings briefly and in a matter-of-fact manner, the description of nausea is of particular note, with Hemingway leaving it up to the reader to discern the sheer extent of the feeling. The fact that the nausea reappears after the climax of the story, where Krebs fights with his mother in the kitchen, intertwines domestic life with the effects of World War I in a way that echoes the main concern of the story: life post-war. Ultimately, Krebs's nausea makes him literally unwell, matching his tumultuous mental and emotional state with a concrete feeling.