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Abstract

This paper uses Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas of authoritative discourse and internally persuasive discourse to examine Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home.” While authoritative discourse represents fixed, societal norms such as patriotism, religion, and masculinity, internally persuasive discourse indicates personal belief systems that evolve with experience. Harold Krebs, the protagonist, and 'hero' of the story, faces internal discord due to the competing discourses after coming back from World War I. His silence and societal disillusionment, which contrasts the community’s expectation, reveals the clash of ideologically imposed norms and individual trauma. This paper argues that through reliance on minimalism, Hemingway mirrors Krebs’ fragmented psyche which in turn reflects the struggle against authoritative discourse without the attainment of a coherent internally persuasive discourse. Forced prayers alongside detached narration reveal Bakhtinian dialogic failure. In surrendering to imposed discourse, Krebs is rendered both alienated and inert. The study contends that “Soldier’s Home” depicts post-war America’s dominant discourses of hegemony which stripped veterans of the ability to assimilate wartime experiences into the fabric of self-identity. Using Bakhtin’s framework, this study sheds light on the modernist aspects of psychological dislocation in Hemingway’s work, deepening the literary analysis of veteran narratives. It has wider consequences for the examination of the conflict between authoritative society and personal truth in interwar literature.