Rites of Spring and Soldier's Home

The two passages given were “Rites of Spring” by Modris Eksteins and “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway, both of the two given works are about a soldiers view on war. In Eksteins’ work he talks about the gruesome view of the battlefront. Soldiers describe the various smells of decomposition and death that they faced while trying to survive the fight. The conditions in which they were fighting were also described, with the trenches full of mud and large vermin. The soldiers talk how the different ways the vermin made the fight more difficult and about various ways to rid the trenches of them, which included rats, flies, mites, nits, fleas, mosquitoes, and beetles. The conditions with the rats were so bad that it is stated, “The battle against the rats was as serious at times as that against the human enemy”.  Another aspect that affected the soldiers and their spirits while in the fight was the weather, it was cold and raining. They describe how even no amount of artillery fire could break a man’s resistance like the wet and cold. In such weather it also made it hard for the soldiers to have any appetite. The food was frozen together and made it hard to enjoy. The rain was described as non -stop flooding trenches and creating pools of which men sank in, “sewer like craters filled with slime that comes of rain, earth, and decomposition”. In Hemingway’s piece it talks more about the effect of fighting that war had on soldiers. The soldier talked about returned home after much of the others did, after all the hype of everyone being heroes had passed. It describes his transition from war to his return back into normal society. He rejoins his previously enjoyed activities and began to notice the changes in the societal culture. The way people dressed and the way women wore their hair it all changed but he still had the same opinions on such things as when he left for war. He even states that he liked Germany better and wished he could have stayed, but here he was at home on the porch of his parent’s house. His mother discusses her worries about his efforts to return to the real world, she fears he has lost his ambition. After a mean exchange for words and hurting his mother’s feelings, he began to really try to return to normal. The two passages just relate because it can be shown that the conditions of war can have many effects on a person. Seeing everything that those men saw in the gruesome and unforgiving war can change them, it can cause them to harden and have trouble adjusting to regular society in which they are not fighting for their lives every day.