A Passage To Africa

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He compares reporting to addiction. It is as though they are always wanting something more controversial and more repulsive.It also seems as though the profession is bad for him: much like a drug. Alagiah is haunted by the question: ‘What was it about that smile?’ It is as though all these years later, he remains haunted and he is unable to forget the man who smiled. 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. 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. 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.

It is the list of 3 adjectives that create the pity and empathy that we feel for the situation. Another example is: 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.

LITERARY DEVICES AND NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

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. A Passage To Africa is a moving, touching account of what George Alagiah felt and experienced in a small town in Africa, and the beauty and intensity of emotion lies, not only in the message behind it, but also in every word of every sentence in this article. 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.

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 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. 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. 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?” 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”.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. 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?

In vivid and evocative prose and with a fine eye for detail, Alagiah’s viewpoint is spiked with the freshness of the young George on his arrival in Ghana, the wonder with which he recounts his first impressions of Africa and the affection with which he dresses his stories of his early family life. I first read this book soon after it was published but it was no hardship to re-read it when it was chosen by my reading group! famine away from the headlines, a famine of quiet suffering and lonely death', this uses anaphora (where a word is repeated at beginning of successive clauses) in this case 'famine'. This is used not only to emphasize the severity of the famine but also to make the reader feel guilt and pity for those suffering in a famine without anybody to hear them or know that it is happening.The following description of the old wounded woman lying ‘abandoned’ in her hut acts as proof for the prior admission that such scenes aren’t news worthy. ‘Decaying flesh’: a hyperbole which does not necessarily seem like one arise the sense of smell along with adjectives such as ‘rotting’. The ellipses before the explanation of her wound show the writer’s hesitation before he describes the army shooting at an old lady as ‘revenge’, making one wonder exactly how brutal and ruthless they must have been if the most subtle euphemism for their action is ‘revenge’. The paradox in ‘the gentle V-shaped boomerang’ casts a ghastly and vivid mental picture of the wound, as well as draws attention to the fact that an old lady is suffering from a war wound. At this point, Alagiah marks a shift. He was the ‘ observer‘, but becomes, in a parallel sentence construction using polyptoton, ‘ the observed‘. He’s no longer the ‘ active‘ watcher of ‘ passive‘ sufferers, at a safe distance, but part of the scene. The distance of the initial antithesis is reversed and he’s now uncomfortably close. 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. In this story “From Passage to Africa”, George Alagiah creates sense of pity by using emotive language. In the extract you can see that he uses extract when he says “hungry”, “scared”. This shows that he is using emotive language to engage with his readers. George Alagiah creates also creates pity when he uses words such as “hut”, “dirt floor”. This shows the difference between our normal world and the one affected by the famine. The fact that he writes about the terrible things in Somalia and there are people who don’t care what is happening increases the pity. 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.

Author is writing about a time when he went to Africa during the war, describing what he sees and the suffering of people living. Passage changes focus from the general to the specific, starts in Somalia with 'I saw thousand hungry, lean scared and betrayed faces' and a whole then moves to the village of Gufgaduud, then to families in the village and finally to the one man he will not forget - a man who is smiling even amidst all of this suffering, who he eventually dedicates the passage to. Rhetorical questions are questions that require no answer. The question remains unanswered in the piece. 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”.enervating’ choice of language shows the life is drained away from the Somalien people through hunger no longer impressed by us much’- apathetic shows the profession is insensitive but because the public crave this type of news