A Passage to Africa Flashcards
‘I saw a thousand hungry, lean, scared and betrayed faces’
-emotive language, ‘I’ makes it personal
-list of negative adjectives
-painting image of people suffering
‘but there is one face I will never forget’
short sentence - emphasised importance of the face he is going to describe later
‘- like a ghost village’
-dash shows how abandoned people are
-simile shows emptiness of town
‘in the ghoulish manner’, ‘hunt’
suggests journalists are predatory
‘like the craving for a drug’
simile - compares need for suffering, indicated dangerous aficionado and how he knows it’s bad but is selfish.
‘no rage, no whimpering, just a passing away’
-repetition of ‘no’ and triad shows how the simplicity of the death and how fast she needs to move on
‘Habiba was ten years old’
use of name/age to make personal and insightful because he’s a journalist
‘the smell of decaying flesh’
-use of senses creates more vivid image
‘festering wound the size of my hand’
comparison to a grown man’s hand gives reader a clearer image
‘it was rotting, she was rotting’
dehumanising, but then uses ‘she’ to remind reader that this struggle is actually real
‘and then there was the face i will never forget’
-short for tension/impact
-reader finally finds out about the face written in intro; climax of story
‘it was not a smile of greeting, it was not a smile of joy - how could it be? - but it was a smile nonetheless’
repetition of smile - shows how shocked he was and how lost for words he was
‘it moved me in a way that went beyond pity or revulsion’
metaphor - highlights how different the smile was and conveys his shock
‘what was it about that smile?’
rhetorical - demonstrates his confusion as to why a man is smiling during a famine and civil war
‘and then it clicked’
-short sentence for clarity
