"APO 96225" by Larry Rottman

In this poem, I was struck by a few main concepts. To begin with, it greatly paralleled The Things They Carried in my opinion. Because of the speaker's emphasis on the ignorance of the American public, I found the links that much more noticeable to our summer novel. For instance, Martha Cross would hardly ever mention the war at all in her letters to Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. She clearly knew what was happening but instead of comforting him she would merely avoid the subject entirely. In contrast, the poem utilized dramatic and situation irony when concerning the American public. Since most readers are aware of the harsh realities of a soldier's life at war, it was dramatically ironic that the speaker kept responding about positive aspects rather than the upsetting ones about war. When his mother asked him what war was like he answered that "the sunsets here are spectacular!" This showed dramatic irony because the soldier was being facetious. War is an ugly and violent circumstance and he did not want his mother to worry about him. As readers, we know that the speaker is being untruthful for the sake of his parents. I also liked how the poem was grammatically structured. While I was reading it, I got the feeling that I was reading a story or a collection of little letters. I liked how the structure mirrored its main concept.