A Passage to Africa

By George Alagiah

“…thousand hungry, lean, scared and betrayed faces…” (line 1)

• list of adjectives → image of suffering

• emotive language

“…but there is one I will never forget" (line 2)

intrigues the reader

“… a village in the back of beyond…” (line 3)

mysterious

“…a place the aid agencies had yet to reach…” (line 4)

sounds helpless

“…I had to jotted down instructions on how to get there…” (line 4)

create a sense of danger and strangeness/unfamiliar

'“like a ghost village” (line 7)

• simile → evokes pathos

• bad vibes

2nd paragraph

hyperbole & listing → emphasizes isolation

“In the ghoulish manner of…” (line 8)

• adjective choice

• ghostly

“…manner of journalists on the hunt for the most striking pictures…” (line 8)

“…and I tramped from one hut to another…” (line 9)

“…and were reaching the final, enervating stages of…” (line 18)

• language choice = predatory

• dangerous

“…no longer impressed us much…” (line 10)

• apathetic

• foe just a few days they’re already used to the violent

“…the search for the shocking is like the craving for a drug…” (line 11)

simile

“…written off as the same old stuff the next…” (line 13)

dismissive → dehumanizes the subjects of those image

“…so move people in the comfort of their sitting rooms…” (line 14)

contrast

“Habiba Had died.”

• short, simple sentence

• clinical tone

“No rage, no whimpering…” (line 20)

anaphora

“…simple, frictionless, motionless deliverance…” (line 21)

triplets

“…from a state of half-life to death itself…” (line 22)

language choice

“…where her shinbone should have been there was a festering wound…” (line 26)

• create more curiosity

• olfactory use of imagery

“It was rotting, she was rotting” (line 29)

• parallel sentence structure

• grotesque

4th paragraph

appeal to senses

“And then there was the face I will never forget.” (line 32)

one line paragraph → importance

“…was a mixture of pity and revulsion (disgust). Yes, revulsion.” (line 33)

• repetition

• honesty = credibility

paragraph 8

contrast

“…or the old and dying man who keeps his hoe next to the mat with…” (line 43-44)

wants to go back to work

“I saw that face…” (line 46)

importance

repetition in “smile”

preoccupation

“…how could it be?” (line 49)

disjointed sentence structure → altered mindset

“And it just clicked.” (line 54)

simple sentence → clarity