with whom they share no common language. Because the American soldiers do not have to talk, and because the German girls are probably prostitutes, relationships between them are uncomplicated. Without any need for conversation, the soldiers simply satisfy their lust on the prostitutes' bodies. Just as he emphasizes the German girls' lack of beauty, Hemingway also erases the Rhine to show the lack of romance in such relationships. In "Soldier's Home," he juxtaposes two worlds: the simple one Krebs shared with the German girls, and the potentially complicated realm of the hometown girls. Both the physical distance between Krebs and the girls and his role as onlooker give him a sense of security. While Krebs remains in a safety zone "on the front porch," he is protected. The girls walk "on the other side of the street"; nothing can touch him (147-48). Like sophisticated Brett Ashley, these small-town Oklahoma girls celebrate a new era with short skirts and short hair. Krebs admires them, yet he protects himself from the danger of sexual involvement as if he were still suffering from a previous affair. He has to control himself. Only as an onlooker can he avoid the "complicated world": But they [the girls] lived in such a complicated world of already defined alliances and shifting feuds that Krebs did not feel the energy or courage to break into it.(147) Ironically, Hemingway uses the terms "alliances" and "feuds," words appropriate to conflicts between nations and families, to describe the girls' complicated world. Moreover, he uses related terms to describe Krebs' feelings towards that world: "He did not want to get into the intrigue and the politics" (147). By emphasizing discord and friction, such terms suggest a conflict already experienced by Krebs, a conflict further revealed as follows: He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without consequences. Besides he did not...
