Sontag's writing is an easy read. Her thoughts flow very fluidly so that its easy to follow her thoughts about her trip. You can in a way just "sink into the rhetoric" and still understand what she's doing as well as the context.
It is interesting to see a first hand recollection of a trip (by an American) to North Vietnam during the war. You really see the misunderstanding between people of different cultures but also between people of differing ideological perspectives. Sontag writes that she is treated with extreme hospitality because she is a guest in the country. This is not something you would expect for a foreigner from a country that is invading their own. She ate fresh meat and fish every day while most regular people would eat rice and bean curd every day. It is simply oriental attitudes that cause them to treat guests so well. I think the part that most stands out was the fact that Sontag, feeling uncomfortable about being treated so well compared to regular people, didn't know what to do. Was she supposed to ask them to back down? If she did, would they be offended? Would they laugh when she asked for rice and bean curd over fresh meat? This shows that she not only understands how they act but also what they would think. A country with people of such different values about guests would obviously also have different attitudes towards political issues such as communism.
In response to whether or not Trip to Hanoi is "more real", I would agree that Sontag's writing does have more of an effect on people. This all comes down to pretty much the same issue as before in The Things They Carried. The fact that you know that it happened makes it so that it has more of an effect on people. If you knew that it was a fictional story it wouldn't have the same effect on people; this was something that O'Brien was well aware of when he was creating the structure of his book.
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