Chapter Four- Losing the Way- Hope

"Although I did not realize it at the time, that flight and those feelings brought with them something else, something I had never experienced in Ky La, something even my wonderful parents- who knew everything about life and duty- could not, for their own heavy burdens, give me: the simple feeling of hope (114)." At this point in the book, Le Ly finally starts feeling more than the destruction and hell of war. She takes a step past what her parents have always taught her, and looks into the future with a new hope that she hasn't really felt before. I think at this point in the book Le Ly gains back some of her footing, and feels a sense of peace while on the airplane to Saigon. Taking off from Ky La, she said that she felt as if she were leaving all her previous tragedies behind her. Le Ly's disposition in this text was uplifting in the sense that she had come to some sort of internal peace about her extremely new and life-altering destination. Her confidence and hope in the new situation gave comfort to her anxious emotions when arriving in Saigon. Here, I think, is where her point of view on the world changed the most, all because of her hopeful and open mind.