Soldiers Home

Post-Traumatic Stress, Warrior Masculinity, and the (Re)Framing of Care

Abstract

The United States military has long been considered a proving ground for masculinity and encourages servicemembers to adopt a warrior mindset of bravery and toughness at the expense of vulnerability. Such a mindset often proves troublesome for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as it dissuades them from seeking care in the form of therapy. This article argues that contemporary recommendations to attune therapy to embrace military masculinity in an attempt to make it more appealing to veterans are misguided. Ernest Hemingway’s 1925 short story “Soldier’s Home” dramatizes how an appeal to normative forms of masculinity as an entry point to post-combat healing risks a rejection of care entirely if this type of masculinity is ever questioned. The substitution of a care-receiving process by a masculinity-affirming process that he cannot accept leaves protagonist Harold Krebs with no choice but to refuse it and flee his hometown after returning from service in World War I. To demonstrate alternative possibilities, the article then examines George Saunders’s “Home” (2013) and Toni Morrison’s Home (2012) as texts that explore how interrogations of military masculinity itself can contribute to the healing process. In both texts, the protagonists realize that manhood means more than protection and violence, which engenders an acceptance of care. While neither text offers a complete resolution by its end, they both gesture towards the necessity of changing perceptions of manhood fostered by the military. To conclude, the article references Walt Whitman’s Memoranda During the War as one historical precedent that demonstrates how certain types of vulnerability are acceptable and necessary, even during wartime.