Alienation and loss in Hemingway's Soldier's Home and Dubus's The Fat Girl

Ernest Hemingway's story Soldier's Home, part of his collection entitled in Our Time, is about a World War I soldier's return home and the mental anguish he experiences. As he attempts to reintegrate himself with the present, he finds himself always being interrupted by the past. Being unable to connect with the town, due to the fact that he has lost an emotional connection to the culture, the soldier moves on, giving up on society.

This semi-autobiographical story shows the internal conflict one faces when returning to somewhere familiar after being gone for a significant time, only to find that it is no longer familiar. Essentially, this epitomizes the phrase "you can never go home again." During several passages, the soldier refers to the feeling of being lost. For example, "In this way he lost everything" (Hemingway, p. 348). Again, "Your father is worried too...He thinks you have lost your ambition, that you haven't got a definite aim in life." (Hemingway, p. 351). These references to being lost resonate to the Lost Generation, of which Hemingway is often cited as being the spokesman for. After returning from the war, these individuals felt disillusioned with a society that, they felt, was out of touch with the reality of the world. Thus, they felt alienated, or lost, from society.