From a Passage to Africa How does the writer, Alight, use language to inform the reader about the harsh realities of being a journalist? In this story “From Passage to Africa”, George Alight creates sense of pity by using emotive language. In the extract you can see that he uses extract when he says “hungry’, “scared”. This shows that he is using emotive language to engage with his readers. George Alight creates also creates pity when he uses words such as “hut”, “dirt floor.
This shows the difference between our normal world and the one affected by the famine. The fact that he writes about the terrible things in Somalia and there are people who don’t care what is happening increases the pity. George Alight successfully increases the pity in the extract by telling us how much he has seen. He talks about a mother and her two starving children and the mother loses one of her daughter because of hunger and that happens while she was out looking for food.
The writer also creates pity by describing the old woman “the smell of decaying flesh”. With this quote George Alight is able to engage the reader as they are imagining the smell of the decaying flesh. One way the writer creates horror is by describing the “ghost village” as if people are dead; however they are alive (barely). Also he creates horror by using words such as “festering wound the size of my hand”.
In the extract George Alight has different feelings about the article, such as pity and sometimes disgust. You are able to see that he feels disgust and pity where he says “that day was mixture of pity and revulsion”. From this quote you can see that not he feels pity for the people, but they also disgust him. However, everyone who sees a very old skinny woman with a hole in her leg will be disgusted by it. This is how writer presents his relationship in the article ” From a Passage to Africa. ”
