A Passage to Africa Flashcards
Q4 Plan
P1: description of Gufgaduud - author’s observations & short-term feelings
P2: long-term, moral impact on author
‘A Passage to Africa’
‘passage’ - journey, adventure OR dedicating the text to Africa bc impactful experience
TAP
T: report on personal experience
A: western & national
P: to inform, raise awareness, add background information to achievement
‘ghoulish manner of journalists on the hunt’
‘ghoulish’ - demonic, inhuman, emotionless & not care for feelings of others
‘hunt’ - animalistic, predatory
P1:
‘comfort of their sitting rooms’
‘comfort’ - contrast ‘huts’ - level of development, hunger etc.
‘reaching the final, enervating stages of terminal hunger.’
‘final’ - forebode death
‘enervating’ (feeling drained of energy) - draining life, unpleasant, painful
‘terminal’ - hopeless, never-ending, inevitable death/doom, sense of dread
‘Habiba had died.’
short sentence - shock for reader
‘simple, frictionless, motionless deliverance from a state of half-life to death itself.’
tautology - simplicity, ease, nonchalant, common, ubiquitous, omnipresent, frequent - emphasise widespread death from starving
list of 3
‘half-life’ - such poor quality of life that it was not considered whole life - unfulfilled
‘decaying flesh’, ‘festering wound’, ‘shattered’
‘It was rotting; she was rotting.’
lexical field of decay & grotesque injuries - graphic imagery
‘it’ vs ‘she’ - dehumanise
repetition of ‘rotting’ - reflect number of wounds, depth/severity of wounds’ impact, dwindling away. slow & painful death
= insufficient healthcare
‘sucked of its natural vitality by the twin evils of hunger and disease’
‘sucked’ - drain, slow, pain, passive
‘natural’ - unnatural process, grotesque
‘twin’ - personification - both equally bad
‘evils’ - sinister, deliberately cruel, victimise those in pain - gain readers’ sympathy
‘to be in a feeding centre’
anaphora - uncomfortable for reader
visceral description - his disgust but honesty
P2:
‘I will never forget.’
short sentence, powerful, lasting impact
‘they aspire to a dignity that is almost impossible to achieve.’
misplaced hope, purpose that will never again be fulfilled
‘aspire’ - sense of hope & relief from hardship
‘dignity’ - moral principles, author’s pity yet admiration
‘almost’ - effort & pride
‘It moved me in a way that went beyond pity or revulsion.’
more impactful effects than initial observations
‘moved’ - significant emotional impact
‘beyond’ deeper, extreme
anaphora of ‘in a way’ - deeper, more potent effect
‘the journalist observes, the subject is observed. the journalist is active, the subject is passive.’
change in voice of verb active to passive
subjects have no control
antithesis - separation b/w cultures
objectifying people & photos, reducing their lives to just his work
