APO 96225
By: Larry Rottman
Ironically, the poem APO 96225 presents the grave matter of the experiences of the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam in both a symbolic and straight forward manner. The poem becomes ironic as the family that the boy rights to constantly asks him to say what war is really like. When he complies stating, "Today I killed a man. Yesterday, I helped drop napalm on women and children," however, the family suddenly asks for less harsh truth. Thus, he returns to the symbolic writing by saying, "Dear Mom, sure rains a lot here." This simple statement is both pure and simple as well as complex and profound. The response takes greater meaning when analyzed from the prospective of a person experiencing the painful complexity of war who knows no way to update his family or express his experiences but by the coded terms of symbolism. Within the phrase, the words ironically represent more than just rain, but tears and sorrow. Similarly, "monkeys" could be seen as representing the Vietnamese people and the "sunsets," the loss of life. Further, the piece takes on more meaning once more when viewed through the perspective of the American people. Just as the mother yearns for the truth, the American people yearned to understand what the Vietnam war was truly like. Ironically though, once people began seeing the true sorrows and pains of war, they pleaded for it to go away and became fixed upon bias that the such actions could not be true.
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