Helen is one of Krebs’s two sisters, though he admits that she is the one he likes best. She is the only character in the story to whom Krebs responds with some positivity. When Helen asks whether he will always love her, for example, Krebs says, “Sure.” She also teases him and calls him by a nickname, and, in this way, represents a certain joyfulness and youth—qualities that seem to appeal to Krebs. Indeed, at one point Helen tells him, “If you loved me, you’d want to come over and watch me play indoor [baseball],” and at the end of the story Krebs decides to do just that. This reaffirms his love for and loyalty to Helen, and also restores some hope in Krebs’s somewhat bleak emotional situation. At the same time, however, the gesture is small, and associated with Helen’s own naiveté about what love is. By playing baseball, Helen also represents a certain intersection of female and male gender expectations. That Helen plays baseball and pitches better than the boys blurs the line between masculinity and femininity. Though Hemingway’s characters often reflect rigid, sexist ideas, the author also, at times, gestures towards the transcendence of these boundaries through female characters like Helen.
Helen Quotes in Soldier’s Home
The Soldier’s Home quotes below are all either spoken by Helen or refer to Helen. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Scribner edition of Soldier’s Home published in 1998.
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Soldier’s Home
Quotes
“Aw, Hare, you don’t love me. If you loved me, you’d want to come over and watch me play indoor.”
“So his mother prayed for him and then they stood up and Krebs kissed his mother and went out of the house. He had tried so to keep his life from being complicated. Still, none of it had touched him…He wanted his life to go smoothly. It had just gotten going that way. Well, that was over now, anyway. He would go to the schoolyard and watch Helen play indoor baseball.”
Related Characters:
Harold Krebs, Helen, Krebs’s Mother, Krebs’s Father
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Soldier’s Home LitChart as a printable PDF.

Helen Character Timeline in Soldier’s Home
The timeline below shows where the character Helen appears in Soldier’s Home. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Soldier’s Home
Krebs goes downstairs for breakfast and his sister Helen teases him about sleeping a lot. She uses a nickname “Hare.” She hands him the...
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Helen tells Krebs that she is playing indoor baseball that afternoon, and she brags about being...
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Krebs’s mother ushers Helen out of the kitchen, as she wants to speak with Krebs alone. She sits down...
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...wants his life “to go smoothly.” He “would” go over to the schoolyard to watch Helen play baseball.
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