A PASSAGE TO AFRICA

Question 1

What form is it?

Answer 1

Essay
Autobiographical writing

Question 2

‘…hungry, lean, scared and betrayed faces’

Answer 2

Negative connotations
Listing
Shows terrible tragic situation

Question 3

‘Ghoulish’

Answer 3

Ghost/creepy connotations
Likes to watch dark and horrible things
Suggests guilt
Emotive language

Question 4

‘…no long impressed us much’

Answer 4

Insensitive
Suffering is supposed to impress them

Question 5

‘…like the craving for a drug’

Answer 5

Simile
Negative connotations (drug addict)
Suffering is drug of choice
Shows journalistic need for suffering
Reflects negatively on him and other journalists

Question 6

‘this sounds callous, but it is just a fact of life’

Answer 6

Short matter of fact sentence

Question 7

‘Habiba had die’

Answer 7

Short matter of fact sentence
Unemotional/callous
Trying to disconnect from emotions (what he has to do to be a journalist)
Death is common

Question 8

‘…simple, frictionless, motionless’

Answer 8

Litotes
Enormous understatement

Question 9

‘there was an old woman who lay in her hut… the smell of decaying flesh’

Answer 9

Imagery
Unpleasant sensory language
Repetition
Shows extent of poverty

Question 10

‘…gentle v-shape of a boomerang’

Answer 10

Juxtaposition of violence and gentle is very jarring
Not gentle

Question 11

‘it was rotting; she was rotting… smell it in the putrid air’

Answer 11

Upsetting disgusting imagery
Repetition to emphasise
Horrible descriptive language

Question 12

‘and then there was the face I will never forget’

Answer 12

Structure
One line paragraph
Shows turning point in the story

Question 13

‘…revulsion. Yes, revulsion’

Answer 13

Repetition
Like direct address
Feels ashamed

Question 14

‘…evils of hunger and disease’

Answer 14

Personification

Question 15

‘to be in a feeding centre… to be in a feeding centre’

Answer 15

Anaphora
Shows how disgusting it is in there
+ unpleasant imagery

Question 16

‘…in this state of utter despair they aspire to a dignity’

Answer 16

Surprising contrast
Alliteration
Living side by side in poverty

Question 17

What kind of pictures and stories do the television news companies want?

Answer 17

Powerful, emotive and tragic images that escalate in intensity

Question 18

‘the comfort of their sitting rooms back home’

Answer 18

Juxtaposes the comfort of the viewer with the extreme distress of the subject

Question 19

What are we shown about the TV audience?

Answer 19

Viewed as heartless and detached in their ‘sitting rooms’
Viewers can become desensitised by repeated images of desperation and poverty - he uses a simile to show how repeated doses of a drug have a lesser effect

Question 20

‘…she had one daughter’

Answer 20

Litotes
Unable to describe or relate to the extreme emotion the mother must feel
Sounds callous

Question 21

‘…on the hunt’

Answer 21

Predator-like connotations
Gives a vivid image of the world of journalists

Question 22

How does sentence structure create effect?

Answer 22

Varied sentence lengths and incomplete sentences keep the reader engaged

Question 23

‘…before the face turned away’

Answer 23

Synecdoche
Less emotionally invested
Has a role/job to do cannot be distracted by his emotions

Question 24

‘how could it be?’

Answer 24

Rhetorical question
Shows confusion

Question 25

‘what was it about that smile? I had to find out’

Answer 25

Structurally not moved by anything at the start but now he is
Rheotrical question + short sentence

Question 26

‘the journalist observes, the subject is observed’

Answer 26

Polyptoton
Contrast of different roles
Inversion of what is normal which is shaking him
Reverses roles

Question 27

‘…between me and him, between’

Answer 27

Repetition
Metaphor
Shows uncomfortable with this switch

Question 28

‘…with all the power and purpose I could muster’

Answer 28

Plosive alliteration
Not going to back down
Shows determination

Question 29

‘…my nameless friend… I owe you one’

Answer 29

Litotes
Shows how it affects the write very powerfully
Direct address

Question 30

What is ‘A passage to Africa about’?

Answer 30

Post-war violence and its effect on people and how the world media, greedy for the news of suffering hunt the people down for the stories and pictures that can be gained from them