A passage to Africa

“hungry, lean, scared and betrayed”

Accumulation of adjectives: Emphasises the horror and suffering of people during the Somalian famine.

“a thousand” / “one”

Juxtaposition: Contrasts mass suffering with individual humanity, suggesting he had been numbed until seeing one man’s smile.

“Take the Badale Road for a few kilometres … forty-five minutes”

Listing of directions: Emphasises how remote the village is and therefore how far it is from help.

“like a ghost village”

Simile: Suggests the people were as good as dead, having lost hope.

“journalists on the hunt”

Metaphor: Conveys the predatory and unsympathetic nature of journalists.

“might have appalled us … no longer impressed us much”

Contrast in verbs: Shows a shift from horror to apathy, demonstrating journalistic numbness.

“like the craving of a drug”

Simile: Highlights developing resistance and addiction to trauma, but also taking drugs is an everyday habit for addicts, so it normalises such horror and suffering

“So move people in their sitting rooms back home”

Cynical tone: Criticises the passivity of Western, armchair news consumers.

“Habiba was ten years old and her sister, Ayaan, was nine”

Naming and age: Humanises them and emphasises youthful innocence, making their deaths more shocking.

“Habiba had died”

Short, blunt sentence: Reflects desensitisation to death among both locals and journalists.

“deliverance”

Religious metaphor: Death is framed as salvation from a state of “half-life”.

“old woman”

Contrast: Youth and old age both evoke pathos, highlighting universal vulnerability.

“The smell that drew me to her doorway … decaying flesh”

Olfactory imagery: Emphasises disgust and the voyeuristic, ghoulish pull of journalism.

“took revenge on whoever it found in its way”

Relative pronoun: “Whoever” suggests indiscriminate, careless violence.

“It was rotting; she was rotting.”

Syntactical parallelism: Shows the infection spreading from wound to body.

“And then there was the face I will never forget.”

Single-sentence paragraph: Marks a dramatic turning point, subverting expectations of increasing horror.

“pity and revulsion”

Juxtaposition: Suggests tension between sympathy and disgust.

“Yes, evils of hunger and disease”

Personification: Presents hunger and disease as vampiric forces draining life.

“hear and smell”

Auditory and olfactory imagery: Shows visceral, physical impact rather than intellectual response.

“surreptitiously”

Adverb: Indicates guilt and conflicted instinctive reaction.

“wipe your hands”

Second-person address: Universalises the reaction, implicating the reader.

“utter despair” / “dignity”

Contrast: Highlights the paradox of maintaining self-worth amid extreme suffering.

“only a few seconds” / “brief moments”

Pattern of brevity: Contrasts short duration with profound impact, showing the power of small gestures.

“it touched me in a way I could not explain”

Inexpressibility topos: Emotion is too profound for language.

“beyond pity or revulsion”

Structural callback/echo/repitition: Shows emotional development beyond basic reactions.

“What was it about that smile?”

Rhetorical question: Highlights confusion and self-interrogation.

“And then it clicked. That’s what the smile had been about”

Short, simple sentences: Emphasise clarity and realisation.

“You might give if you felt you …”

Shift to second person: Universalises and humanises his response.

“Normally inured to stories” / “unsettled by this one smile”

Contrast: Shows how one moment breaks journalistic numbness.

“the journalist and his subject”

Binary opposition: Establishes power imbalance between observer and observed, and that there is no room for humanity and sympathy due to this binary role people play in journalism

“The journalist observes, the subject is observed …”

Repetition of ‘observed’: Suggests scientific detachment rather than shared humanity.

“If he was embarrassed … how should I feel?”

Rhetorical question: Forces moral self-scrutiny. ,Contrast: “weakened” vs “strong” emphasises inequality.

“I resolved”

First-person active verb: Marks a shift from guilt to purpose.

“there and then”

Deixis: Suggests immediacy and decisiveness.

“all the power and purpose”

Plosive sounds: Convey confidence and renewed resolve.

“and still does”

Shift in tense: Shows enduring impact.

“Facts and figures are the easy part of journalism …”

Contrast: Statistics versus moral understanding within a greater human context.

“I owe you one”

Colloquial idiom: Breaks professional distance. ,Second-person address: Treats the man as an equal, reflecting more humane journalism.