A Passage To Africa

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enervating’ choice of language shows the life is drained away from the Somalien people through hunger It is interesting that the description of the place comes before we understand why Alagiah was in Africa. This creates a sense of disgust and repulsion. In the penultimate paragraph, the journalist shows his resolution to 'write the story of Gufgaduud with all the power and purpose I could muster', due to his guilt and to due to his feeling that this is the only way in which he can answer the question of how one should react to other people's' suffering. The writer suggests that the only way to react to it is spreading awareness and portraying the situation as powerfully and unflinchingly as he can.

abandoned by relations who were too weak to carry her on their journey' - creates sympathy for her, as a reader thinks of their own family abandoning them, and the way in which she's been abandoned by the world. Yet it doesn't blame the family, because they have to find food for themselves, so cannot care for her. This shows the extreme choices people have to make in this famine. Note the contrast between the two quotes mentioned above. Whilst the first set of adjectives are harsh, the second contains much gentler and softer description. It is almost as though Alagiah is contrasting the harshness of the incidents with the human empathy that he feels. Immediately the introduction shows where the focus of the passage will turn to, the 'one I will never forget', which interests the reader about why he will never forget this face. 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 herInstantly engaging, this is a superbly informative and highly readable overview of a continental character flaw - how national potential can be overrun by personal gain. He then talks about an old woman abandoned by her family when they went in search of food as none of them was strong enough to carry her. The woman’s leg was bent like a boomerang after being shot by the forces of the despot. He locates her due to her rotting flesh and the smell it gave out, she was still alive with : How does the writer, Alagiah, use language to inform the reader about the harsh realities of being a journalist? The writer also creates pity by describing the old woman “the smell of decaying flesh”. With this quote George Alight is able to engage the reader as they are imagining the smell of the decaying flesh. One way the writer creates horror is by describing the “ghost village” as if people are dead; however they are alive (barely). Also he creates horror by using words such as “festering wound the size of my hand”. Other questions will be long questions. For these questions, you must look at using analysis. You will also be asked to compare. Think carefully about the key comparisons and plan your answer first.

In paragraph 3 the writer tells us that they have seen so much horror that they can't appreciate it any longer. The very beginning of the excerpt speaks of the condition of the people of Somalia, calling them “a thousand hungry, lean, scared and betrayed faces” emphasising how they were betrayed by the people who were supposed to protect them or pretend that they will protect them. The author even throws shade at his own venture inside the land in search of more terrible sights, calling it a ghoulish hunt, portraying the inhumane greed of the media world that prides itself on being the first to uncover stories and venture in search of suffering and monetises them. We find out in the third paragraph what the journalists are doing in such a village. They are looking for pictures for their newspaper. The writer’s disgust at his own job shows in the way he describes their job as a ‘ghoulish hunt’ in which they ‘trample huts’ looking for ‘striking pictures.’ These words refer indirectly to the prey/predator metaphor, where the journalists are the searchers, the ferocious and ruthless hunters looking for ways to exploit the suffering and deaths of the village locals, who become the helpless victim which covers and trembles before the mightier being. George Alagiah is a BBC newsreader. He used to be a reporter and he was sent to Africa to cover the events that unfolded in the 1990s in Somalia. At this time, there was a civil war and the people encountered many difficulties.George Alagiah successfully increases the pity in the extract by telling us how much he has seen. He talks about a mother and her two starving children and the mother loses one of her daughter because of hunger and that happens while she was out looking for food. The writer also creates pity by describing the old woman “the smell of decaying flesh”. With this quote George Alagiah is able to engage the reader as they are imagining the smell of the decaying flesh.

Alagiah finishes his testimony on a note of optimism, which sadly seems somewhat unfounded when one looks at the present situation in almost all of these countries. From a personal perspective, as one living in South Africa these past ten years, it's especially saddening to see that his hope for the future of this beautiful country, put on a positive and inclusive road by Nelson Mandela, has since succumbed to the twin blights of corruption and governmental mismanagement. 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: The journalist observes, the subject is observed. The journalist is active, the subject is passive. But this smile had turned the tables on that tacit agreement. Without uttering a single word, the man had posed a question that cut to the heart of the relationship between me and him, between us and them, between the rich world and the poor world. If he was embarrassed to be found weakened by hunger and ground down by conflict, how should I feel to be standing there so strong and confident?comfort’- contrast of the horrible conditions in Africa but points out this barbaric act is at the cost that we want this I resolved there and then that I would write the story of Gufgaduud with all the power and purpose I could muster. It seemed at the time, and still does, the only adequate answer a reporter can give to the man’s question. The village is called a ghost village bringing emphasis to how empty the village is devoid of people, peace and slowly dying. While recounting the case of Amina, the use of her name make the readers more affected by her plight, the name reminding the readers, that this is a story of a person, with feelings and pain just like everyone else. George also gives details about the situation to provide more context, like the mud floor that tells us how impoverished the population there is. The child dies without any sound, “ No rage, no whimpering, just a passing away” thus reminding the readers how helpless the people are, too starved to even make a sound or move. “No rage”, again emphasising that they are beyond the point of anger and resistance, even if they want to resist and change things around them they are simply denied any chance to do so by the structures and nature around them, no one to lend a hand and no one to listen. 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.

It is the list of 3 adjectives that create the pity and empathy that we feel for the situation. Another example is: There’s pity, too, because even in this state of utter despair they aspire to a dignity that is almost impossible to achieve. An old woman will cover her shriveled body with a soiled cloth as your gaze turns towards her. Or the old and dying man who keeps his hoe next to the mat with which, one day soon, they will shroud his corpse, as if he means to go out and till the soil once all this is over.

The 'shattered leg had fused into the gentle V-shape of a boomerang', using a simile to make the image much more clearly for the reader. Compare and Contrast the Ways in Which Two Poets Create Sympathy for Their Characters – ‘on a Portrait of a Deaf Man’ and ‘the River God’. Paragraph 5 describes an 'old woman' who has a wound which hasn't been treated and who is rotting in her house, unable to find food for herself. It was rotting; she was rotting' changes 'it' from 'she' to show how broken and dehumanized she is by the famine, she has no basic no human rights. This also shows how we dehumanize those across the world who are suffering, and, like the writer, need reminding that they too are human.