The Homecomer (1945)

Alfred Schuetz
Summary
The Homecomer is Alfred Schuetz essay about returning war veteran
to his home. While everyone expects to finally find happiness and live like
happy family, the reality imposes somehow a different situation.
The homecomer is no longer a participant of daily life and routine in
his family house. He is returning from his residence (away from home) to
his real home where everything has changed (wife, kids, a man himself).
The intimacy and familiarity are gone with time. Veteran is hoping to
establish old intimacy with people and things, but he is misunderstood
he cannot easily explain what he gone through. Experiences that he had
lived made him another man. He is not the same for himself, neither for
his family. Everybody have stereotypes of soldiers life somewhere in
Pacific but these stereotypes are created and censored for military and
political reasons. To them all veterans stories are almost the same stories
what every homecomer has told and what they have heard on television or
seen in the movies. Thus, many endurance and sacrifice remain unnoticed
by people at home.
There is one more important moment of this problematic. War is, as
Durkheim calls it, state of anomie. So, soldier is returning to his group that
is also in the postwar state of anomie, lack of control and discipline. Now
he cant overcome this anomie as that in the situation of battle (through
struggle of power). In civil world soldier must choose his own path by
himself and not in in-group as in battlefield.
It is important for this essay to highlight the real situation and
struggle that war veterans are going through this difficult period. It is
important to undo the romanticized Hollywood-made picture that is
imposed to us.