How does Alagiah present his relationship to the subject of the article, A Passage to Africa?

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  • Created by: SarahM39
  • Created on: 18-03-18 09:31

How does Alagiah present his relationship to the subject of the article, A Passage to Africa?

The alliteration and rule of three in ‘collect and compile’ juxtaposed against ‘comfort’ sets out the basic tension in the article: of making money from collecting other people’s suffering, and selling it to people sitting comfortably at home. He uses the semantic field of predation [being a predator] in: ‘journalists on the hunt’ to suggest the sufferers are prey, or victims - of journalists like himself, which is particularly unsettling. Alagiah explicitly shows us how uncomfortable he is with what he does, while admitting it’s ‘like a drug’.  

The subject of the article is ‘famine’ which he shows en masse then zooms in to the ‘thousand’ ‘hungry’ people, then one specific village of ‘Gufgaduud’ then names specific people ‘Amina Abdirahman’ who he speaks to, as well as ‘the old woman’ who he finds. This specific detail increases our pity and horror at the suffering through the particular examples. When Alagiah zooms back out again to a non-specific ‘feeding centre’ - using the infinitive ‘to be in a feeding centre is to’ to show an abstract, generalized picture, we’re shocked at his revulsion, but also get the same feeling of being overwhelmed.

Finally, he uses a short fragment paragraph ‘And then there was the face I will never forget’. This

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