A Passage to Africa- George Alagiah

‘ Isaw a thousand hungry, lean, scared and betrayed faces…’

Asyndetic list of adjectives, emotive language -creates empathy and pity

‘Like a ghost village.’ ‘Ghoulish manner’ ‘hunt’

Similie - creates a sense of foreboding/tension/danger. Semantic field of death.

‘The search for the shocking is like the craving for a drug: you require heavier and more frequent doses the longer your at it’

Extended similie - compared to an addiction, suggest to the audience that the job is not healthy for Alagiah, creates sympathy for him.

‘No rage, no whimpering, just passing away’

Asyndetic list- simplifies death, highlight how easily Habiba had died and suggest that her death was nothing special and it was nearly expected.

‘Festering wound’ ‘The shattered leg’ ‘It was rotting; she was rotting’

Semantic field of decaying/decline/suffering. Repetition, highlight Alagiahs moment of realisation.

‘And then there was the face I will never forget.’

Repetition (‘I will never forget’)- single, alone sentence - highlights the importance to the reader, creates tension.

‘Sucked of its natural vitality by the twin evils of hunger and disease’

Metaphor- violent imagery, emotive language

‘Is surreptitiously to wipe your hands on the back of your trousers after you’ve held the clammy palm of a mother who has just cleaned vomit from her child’s mouth.’

Anecdotes, graphic description, adverb ‘surreptitiously’ suggest guilt when Alagiah does this as he is repulsed/disgusted.

‘The journalist observes, the subject is observed. The journalist is active, the subject is passive’

Dehumanising as people are stripped of their humility and grouped together as just the subject. Contrast between the journalist and the subject, highlights the difference between them.

‘So, my nameless friends if you are still alive, I owe you one’

Possessive pronoun- either demonstrates how he cares about him OR still thinks of him as the ‘subject’ instead of an individual. Caesura- moments of remembrance/reflection, contrast- doesn’t know him, yet refers to him as ‘friend’