A Passage To Africa

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through my notes and studied the dispatch that the BBC broadcast, I see that I never found out what the man’s name was. Yet meeting him was a seminal moment in the gradual collection of experiences we call context. Facts and figures are the easy part of journalism. Knowing where they sit in the great scheme of things is much harder. So, my nameless friend, if you are still alive, I owe you one. The beginning of the passage is a one sentence introductory paragraph starting with a series of adjectives in rapid succession: ‘thousand, hungry, lean, scared and betrayed faces.’ Showing the turmoil of emotions the author felt, unable to pin down the description of the faces in one word, it also evokes at once the curiosity of the reader a well as lays the ground work for the setting: a general picture of death and disease form in one’s mind. The use of the noun ‘faces’, not names, not people, but ‘faces’ shows the impersonal detachment of the author. They aren’t human beings to him; they are just faces, just surfaces and expressions. This is emphasized in the ending of the sentence: ‘…but there is one I will never forget.’ Along with informing us about a meeting which was so exceptional that the author cannot forget it, it also implies that the rest of the death and suffering he sees around him are very much forgettable and don’t really affect him. Normally inured to stories of suffering, accustomed to the evidence of deprivation, I was unsettled by this one smile in a way I had never been before. There is an unwritten code between the journalist and his subjects in these situations.

This simultaneous degradation of the village people and elevation of the journalists is ironical as it proves that in the author’s mind it is the village people who are above them as he views himself as nothing more than a relentless animalistic hunter who is following a trail. This feeling of revulsion which the hunter feels towards himself is further shown in the ellipses in ‘my cameraman… and I’ as if he hesitates a little, out of shame and self-disgust, before admitting that he too was involved. This hatred that he harbors for his own feelings is explained when he admits that all those things that might have appalled him before don’t even leave an impression on him now, showing how his job is changing him, making him harder, more cynical and detached.Emotive Language is any language that makes you feel something for a person or situation. It is an umbrella term and there are many different devices that create emotive language: Supplemental understanding of the topic including revealing main issues described in the particular theme; hunt’ and ‘tramped’- predatory language shows the profession as a predatory nature it is animal like and barbaric I saw a thousand hungry, lean, scared and betrayed faces as I criss-crossed Somalia between the end of 1991 and December 1992, but there is one I will never forget.

Even in these moments of desperation and impoverishment, the people are ashamed of the predicament that was forced upon them, they are ashamed of being weak. This makes George think, if helplessness makes them ashamed what should people like him, who are healthy and in search of suffering to make money out of it feel about their actions as they carry on without lending the people a helping hand? A Passage To Africa | Context enervating’ choice of language shows the life is drained away from the Somalien people through hunger He lists incidents that he has seen over the years that will forever be in his head. It is as though he is traumatised by all he has seen, from a mother with her children to an old woman. structure There was the old woman who lay in her hut, abandoned by relations who were too weak to carry her on their journey to find food. It was the smell that drew me to her Pharapreising and interpretation due to major educational standards released by a particular educational institution as well as tailored to your educational institution – if different;

LITERARY DEVICES AND NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

Paragraph 7 moves from a direct presentation of the suffering to how he experienced it, and how it is shown on TV and in reports to audiences across the world. The passage then breaks into two with a short sentence to show the change in focus to 'the face I will never forget'