The Disappearance of Krebs: Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” as a Critique of Whiteness

Abstract:Where previous scholars have read Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” as a story about post-World War I disillusionment and the concomitant crisis in masculinity, this article examines Hemingway’s use of raced masculinity. By pointing to Oklahoma, a location of racial violence; Kansas, a location of extended Klan influence; and the National Baseball League, a site of exclusively White corruption, Hemingway builds a submerged text focused on the dangers of White Supremacy and White Privilege. Hemingway then engages the trope of White Womanhood as a tool of raced masculinity. “Soldier’s Home” shows how a spectral presence of anti-Black violence shapes one white soldier’s reintegration.