Soldiers Home

“How do you return to the ‘real world when only other soldiers can understand how you’ve changed” (Swofford 12)? This is what almost all soldiers feel when they come home from the war. People question them on what happened while they were there and ask how many people did they kill when they were at war. Home just doesn’t feel like home to them anymore. When the soldiers come home all they want to do is forget about everything that they have done until they are ready to talk about it.

Diaz states, “we didn’t talk much about the likelihood of his return to the war” (16). This shows that when the soldiers do come home from whatever place they were stationed they just want to visit with the people that they haven’t seen in awhile. They do not want to talk about everything that happened in the war. If the soldiers do talk about something that has to do with the war it is usually something to do with the people that are coming to give them food or someone that is coming to talk to them while they are in war. They do not want to have to think about the tough times they had during their sentences.

While at home the soldier may also find everyday things hard to do such as sleeping. “The soldier will sleep restlessly” (Swofford 12). “After a year or longer of sleeping on the desert floor or a cot, a mattress will feel dangerously comfortable” (Swofford 12). The soldiers are not used to something soft and comfortable to sleep on so when they do have something like this it is very hard for them to function. What would it feel like to be taken away from a comfortable mattress for over a year being forced to lay in the desert or on a cot and then all of a

sudden to be

put back on something very comfortable?

In “Soldiers Home” and in a “Corner of Hell a Moment of Beauty” they talk about how all of the soldiers look exactly alike. If people are to look at a picture taken by a soldier during a

war it is very hard to tell one person from another. No one really has their own physical appearance. Diaz states, “ with their army haircut and their desert khakis, they all looked alike to me” (16). While in “Soldiers Home” Hemingway says, “There is a picture which shows him among his fraternity brothers, all of them wearing the same height and style collar” (154). Both of these show that the soldiers have to wear the same things and have their hair at a certain length. They are told when to do everything, when to eat, when to sleep. They are molded to be a soldier and in a way soldiers are programmed to look alike, think alike and are expected to act in a certain manner. It may feel a lot different when they come home and are able to wear whatever they feel like wearing, can decide what they want to eat, when they want to do things most of the time and to look around and see that everyone has something different on.

There are times when the soldiers just feel so uncomfortable when they are in their homes that they want to go back desperately. They have been with certain people for such a long time that the bond that was built is hard to pull away from. The soldier will feel like they need to be back with the rest of the soldiers because