APO 96225

"APO 96225" by Larry Rottman

The irony of the poem seems to take over the entirety of the poem. The young man knows what is going on in the war yet decides to tell his parents the good side of the story. Also, the mother very well knows what war is like. The mother asks for the real story of what is going on in the war. When he tells her, she then decides she really did not want to know it. The irony of the poem follows that although people ask for what is really going on, in reality, we do not really want to know. Like asking someone how they are, we do not really care what the question is, it is more about asking it. Sometimes when we ask for something we do not really care to know the details of, we get it by asking. The mother did that in this poem and ironically got the answer she should have expected from the beginning. Also, humor seems to follow along with the irony. The humor comes in the same sense that as soon as the young man bluntly says what he did, his mother decides she does not want to hear in. To return to that, he repeats his first statement: "Dear Mom, sure rains a lot here" (Rottman, 846).