Trip To Hanoi

From the very beginning of Trip To Hanoi, Susan Sontag states her strong anti-war stance, and so, I went in with some preconceived notions about how I thought this novel would play out. I was fully expecting to hear graphic stories of the Vietnamese suffering at the merciless hands of the Americans. I prepared myself for gore, trauma, tragedy and hostility. Then I started reading. Needless to say, I was wrong. Trip to Hanoi is an unmistakably anti-war rhetorical piece, but instead of focusing on graphic tales of death and suffering, Sontag instead tries to persuade her audience by humanizing the Vietnamese people and passively challenging pro-war reasoning, yet I believe that it fails in the ultimate goal of motivating the audience to support her cause.

First and foremost, Sontag spends most of the article humanizing the Vietnamese to Americans who, as she describes, usually posses a mental representation of the Vietnamese that is somewhat unnatural and most definitely different from Americans. Instead of taking the approach that I expected; recounting stories of horrific suffering and trying to shock the audience, Sontag employs this more subtle rhetorical methodology to, I believe, considerable effectiveness. She beings by describing some of the misconceptions she herself had as she went in. In fact, much of the first portion of the novel is dedicated to her struggling to cope with the differences between her expectations and reality. She summarizes her feelings well by saying “What I’d been creating and enduring for the last four years was a Vietnam inside my head….[But] the Vietnam I’d been thinking about for years was scarcely filled out at all”. Sontag doesn’t try to portray the Vietnamese as exact duplicates of Americans; she dedicates a lot of the novel to describing some of the differences, but she recognizes that most of the differences stem from their vastly different culture. She never paints them as inherently un-human or lacking in some basic American components of humanity. Her primary goal is to portray that although the Vietnamese have different practices than most Americans, they are inherently the same and need to be considered as much. However, she also doesn’t portray them just as human beings but instead she goes farther to describe how they are, in fact, very likable people. She frequently discusses their helpfulness and generosity. She also clearly states that the Vietnamese actually like Americans. They obviously do not like that they are being attacked by Americans, but yet, she finds through her interviews that most Vietnamese still idolize America and gladly accept and even pursue some aspects of American culture. At the time of her writing, because of the war, many Americans were undoubtedly harboring ill-will towards the Vietnamese. So, Sontag decided to use this as a starting point for her anti-war argument by portraying the Vietnamese as extremely kind, compassionate and overall likable. I found this technique to be very disarming because I was expecting a very challenging and graphic recount of war stories, so this affable description of everyday life in Hanoi was rather appealing. As Heinrichs states in Thank You For Arguing, the first step in persuading an audience is changing its mood, and Sontag’s strategy of personifying the Vietnamese definitely changed my mood.

Another common element in Trip to Hanoi is Susan Sontag’s passive challenges to the contemporary logic supporting the war. Two of the main arguments for American occupation of Vietnam was to liberate the Vietnamese from Communism and to stop the spread of Communism. However, Sontag challenges the logic of the arguments in a very non-aggressive and therefore non alarming manner. Although she never directly states that every person in Vietnam does not want to be “liberated” from communism, through her interviews she suggests the idea that maybe they actually welcome communism. She often describes how communism works well with their peasant lifestyle in that the principles of sharing and equality coincide with their culture and values. Also, she talks about their pride as a country and their wish to remain solitary, not under the control of another country such as the U.S. Also, she never shows a direct support for communism, but she also never really acknowledges any of it’s supposed evils that most Americans held as absolute truth. She never states that America should become communist and she never says that capitalism is bad, she basically just acknowledges that communism seems to work well for the Vietnamese. Sontag is able to contradict common conceptions without seeming aggressive. And for those who still believed the war was justifiable, she basically stated that the Vietnamese will not lose the war, but once again, she did this in a very non-aggressive manner. In essence, she merely reiterated the history of Vietnam that she learned through her stay, telling of how numerous other countries have tried to control Vietnam, and yet they all have been overthrown. She then tells how, in the eyes of the Vietnamese, the Americans are no different than the French, or the Chinese, or any other previous insurgent, and therefore, the U.S. too will fail. The passive-aggressive manner in which she makes all these arguments I found to be very effective. If she had directly came out and stated “Communism is good and here is a list of reasons why…” I probably would have disregarded nearly everything she said, but because she adopts this subtle approach, I never was taken aback and therefore, I was more likely to believe what she said. This accomplishes Heinrichs’ second step: change the audience’s opinion.

However, Heinrichs’ third and final step, filling the audience with a desire to act, is where I feel that Sontag does not succeed. Up until the end, I found everything that she said to be fairly logical and agreeable. However, once she reached the point where she left Hanoi, it seems to me that she adopted a very introspective outlook, which does not help persuade an audience. She dedicates the last portion of the novel to describing her struggles adapting to life outside of Hanoi again, and she wonders, through her writing, whether she will revert to her old ways. Finally, she ends by saying “I discover that what happened to me in North Vietnam did not end with my return to America, but is still going on.” So, obviously this experience changed her. However, she never really seems to make a point to lead the audience in any clear direction of action. Obviously, most people who read this will never have the opportunity that she had. So, I would have thought that she would have at least provided some general idea of how they should follow up this story with action, yet there is none. Susan Sontag’s novel was able to change my mood and change my mind, but it was not able to fill me with a desire to act, and therefore, I do not feel that Trip to Hanoi is rhetorically effective.