Shocking

Throughout the beginning of the essay, the author uses a contrasting view of the North Vietnamese then many Americans had at that time. They were not crazy radicals who wanted world domination, they were just people fighting to unify their country which had been torn apart for a long time.
She writes about the journey over there and how she did not know anyone, but also about how she was expecting so many things about her trip that would turn out not true, just like the fact that she said she would not write about it. She uses rhetoric to appeal to the audiences sense of humanity by showing that the North Vietnamese are people that die just as we can. It instills the notion that there are regular people in the North that are just like people that are in the US, which would begin to make people who had not been interested in anti-war protests to begin to question the war and its tactics.
She gives the reader insight into the lives of the people and what they are dealing with everyday so that the reader can know of the atrocities that are being experienced. All the while she is also giving the reader an idea of what it means to be an outsider in the war.