"Life Here is Both Uglier and more Promising."

Preconceived notions are a part of everyday thought. Someone would be lying if they said they never thought about how or what something was going to be like before it happened. Susan Sontag was a victim of her own preconceived notions about Vietnam as shown in her story, "Trip to Hanoi." She spends a majority of the story struggling with why this place is not how she envisioned it, therefore causing her frustration with her experience.

It is nearly impossible for anybody to envision a post-war Vietnam who has never stepped foot in the country before. While the U.S. was showered with news, pictures, and video of the war in Vietnam and its aftermath, nobody has any idea what the situation trully is. We may only have preconceived notions of the culture and how they are adapting to their situations. As Sontag states, "Indeed, the problem was that Vietnam had become so much a fact of my consciousness as an American that I was having enormous difficulty getting outside my head." (Sontag, p. 209) This explains her uneasiness with her over accommodating hosts. She does not realize the cultural differences between her own nation and the one she treads on in the story. She sees a nation of war-torn refugees living the best they can.

Sontag's story, in a rhetorical sense, is a lesson acceptance. Her frustration is a lesson taught to all who read this story. She is arguing (in an excellently dictated manner I might add) that when thrown into a situation that is not of the norm, look to see the cultural signifigance and learn from it. Susan Sontag states at the end of the text, "I came back from Hanoi considerably chastened. Life here looks both uglier and more promising." (Sontag, p. 271) While her bitterness with the state of the nation exists strongly, she sees that hope still lies in the generosity of Vietnam's citizens.