APO 96225 by Larry Rottmann

The poem APO 96225 by Larry Rottmann is a poem that is a sequence of letters between parents and their son who is a soldier. The mother asks how things are, and after giving false answers demands the son to tell the truth of the situation. The son responds with, "Today I killed a man. Yesterday, I helped drop napalm on women and children" (Rottmann, lines14-15). The son is blunt and honest, and mother immediately rejects the truth and asks for him to go back to the false responses. This is a perfect example of irony in many respects. The mother could not handle the truth and continued to act as if the truth had not actually occurred. This irony sends the message about war that people who are not fighting the war can never imagine the horrors of war. The son is so numb to the reality of the actions he has taken. This poem reveals that the public turns their eye in the opposite direction when it comes to learning of negative aspects of war. The poem is implying that war changes the perspectives of both citizens and soldiers. The soldiers lose a sense of the severity of their actions, and the public allows immoral actions to take place with knowledge of them occurring.