From A Passage to Africa Flashcards
Notes on the piece as a whole
Autobiography/recount, discursive essay - presents a debate on whether what he does is right or wrong.
‘A thousand’
Deliberately large, round number - shows there were many stories he could’ve told
‘Hungry, lean, scared and betrayed’
Emotive words in a list for emphasis
‘Faces’
Synecdoche
‘Criss-crossed’
Semi-formal register, relating to reader
‘Will never forget’
Future tense with NO conditional, hook
‘End of 1991 and December 1992’, ‘Just outside Gufgaduud’
Scene setting, provides context and engages reader
‘Back of beyond’
Idiom
‘Aid agencies had yet to reach’
Shows it’s very remote
Note on who the narrator focuses on
The one who affects him the most is not the one who is suffering the most
‘Ghost village’, ‘ghoulish’
Similar descriptions to provide textual cohesion
‘Journalists on the hunt’
Not there to help, deliberately shocking metaphor
‘The search for the shocking is like like the craving for a drug: you require heavier and more frequent doses the longer you’re at it’
Simile, continues, suggests desensitisation
‘Same old stuff’
Sibillance, dismissive
‘Collect and compile’
Alliteration
‘Comfort of their sitting rooms back home’
Shows how people don’t care about things, especially if they’re not affected by it
‘There was’ (repeated at the beginning of 2 consecutive paragraphs)
Anaphora, provides cohesion
‘Final, enervating stages of terminal hunger’
Emotive, graphic
‘By the time Amina returned, she had only one daughter’
Indirect, more moving
‘No rage, no whimpering, just a passing away’, ‘simple, frictionless, motionless’
Tripling
‘Just a passing away… from a state of half-life to death itself’
Implies that she never really lived because of poverty and her situation
‘Famine away from the headlines….’
Quotes his own report
‘Drew me’
Conventional metaphor
‘Decaying, ‘festering, ‘shattered’ etc
Shocking and very graphic descriptions
‘Deposed dictator […] took revenge on whoever it found in its way’
Inhumane, use of ‘it’ also makes them seem much less human
‘Gentle V-shape’
Juxtaposition, shocking
‘And then there was the face I will never forget’
Own paragraph, signals what is coming, ‘will’ is definite future tense
‘Twin evils of hunger and disease’
Deliberately shocking metaphor
‘Sucked of’
Metaphor, suggests something vampiric
‘Degeneration’, ‘disgusting’, ‘revulsion’ etc
More shocking vocabulary
‘Yes, revulsion’
Speech-like, engages reader.
‘To be’ repeated x2
Anaphora
‘Your hands’, ‘you’ve held’
2nd person, personalises experience and engages reader
‘Will shroud’
Definite future tense, morbid
‘Fleeting meeting’
Rhymes
‘It was not’ x2
Anaphora, emphasis
‘How could it be?’
Rhetorical question, makes the reader even more aware of their suffering
‘I could not explain’
Encourages the reader to think
Notes on the face
Only talks about it once enough suspense has been built, anticlimactic, especially when compared with other examples of suffering that theoretically should’ve affected him more
‘What was it about that smile?’
Rhetorical question
‘You might give if you felt you had done something wrong’
2nd person, engages reader
‘Turned the tables’
Idiom
‘Me and him… us and them… rich world and poor world’
Tripling, emphasises contrasts, as would be used in a speech
‘Ground down by conflict’
Metaphor
‘How should I feel to be standing there so strong and confident?’
More rhetorical questions
‘I could muster’
Implies he has very little
‘I have one regret’
Feels guilty
‘I never found out what the man’s name was’
Showing his guilt due to the fact that this man has had a profound influence on him but he doesn’t know a simple thing about him, dehumanising
‘I owe you one’
He’s been shown a new moral viewpoint
Notes on ending of passage
Not discussing his experiences by the end but it has morphed into a general essay using his experiences as evidence. Last paragraph is a summary
