Respect a Soldier's Service

"APO 96225" by Larry Rottman

With this poem, Rottman intends to convey his consternation at the American public's reaction to the Vietnam War, especially in how the American people treated their own soldiers. To do so, he fabricates an exchange of letters between a soldier and his parents.  Throughout the letters, Rottman incorporates situational and dramatic irony to show how American soldiers were mistreated.  First, the soldier's initial letters include optimistic responses like, "The sunsets here are spectacular!" (Rottman 846).  These responses display situational irony because one would not normally expect a soldier to comment positively on the war-torn landscape around him.  Furthermore, these ironic responses represent the American soldiers' trying to make the best out of a bad situation.  Insensitive to the soldier's attempts at optimism, the parents in this letter correspondence implore the soldier to share with them how the war has actually been going.  When he does as asked by saying, "Today I killed a man. Yesterday, I helped drop napalm on women and children," the father reprimands his son for depressing his mother with such horrendous stories of the deeds he has done (Rottman 846).  This exchange displays situational irony as one would assume a parental figure to console a child at war. Furthermore, the exchange displays dramatic irony by depicting the soldier's parents as horrified by their son's intentionally committed atrocities whereas, in actuality, the soldier most likely had no desire whatsoever to kill a man or torture women and children.  Therefore, as a whole, the poem aims to communicate how inappropriate the misguided negative sentiments of the American people were toward their soldiers.