'APO 96225 And Dulce Et Decorum Est'

As a general rule, people do not like to see or be told about death or human suffering – especially in great detail. In regards to war, most people would like to pretend that it is not as bad as it really is, or even that it’s not bad at all. Some glorify the experience of going to war while others simply turn a blind eye to what is truly going on. In both “APO 96225” by Larry Rottmann and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, the horrors of war are revealed to someone who would rather not know. Rottmann shows someone unaware and afraid of what happens during the fighting, while Owen shows a veteran’s grisly flashback in the form of a message to those who falsely glorify war. However, each poem gives its audience an image of what war is like,

The young man in “APO 96225” gives no outward hint of what is really going on, writing things like “Dear Mom, sure rains a lot here” (Rottmann 3). However, the reader can see that he is only sparing his family from thinking about the rain of bullets that he really must endure every day. The mother and father can tell and are “quite concerned” (Rottmann 5), asking him in each letter to tell them what is really happening. They represent the group of people who are vaguely aware of how bad war can be but are content to live without the details. When they are actually told how bad it is they get upset and tell the soldier to stop saying “depressing” (Rottmann 17) things – even though he only gives them the facts they

In “APO 96225” the mother can tell immediately that her son is lying to her “as mothers always do” (Rottmann 4), which shows that there are many people who know that those who glorify war are lying, yet they accept the ignorance. The mother also repeatedly begs her child to tell her absolutely “everything!” (Rottmann 13), completely ignorant to the fact that the letters were carefully written to protect her from things she can’t handle. The reader can see that the son has learned through experience that war is something that not everyone can handle, which is similar to the idea expressed in “Dulce et Decorum Est.” In Owen’s poem, the same inability to handle the truth is represented by whomever the veteran’s speech is directed at. The veteran says that these people would not tell the “old Lie” (Owen) that it is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country if they had to endure it themselves. The author makes a point that young people craving “desperate glory” (Owen) are easily susceptible to lies about how they could achieve