A Passage to Africa

Question 1

Purpose

Answer 1

• Explains the author’s role as a reporter, expresses his thoughts and feelings
• Challenging our role as newsreaders
• Shouldn’t the people sitting in their living rooms do something about what they see?

Question 2

What kind of pictures / stories do tv news companies want?

Answer 2

• Powerful images - ‘the most striking images.’
• Disturbing or morbid images - ‘ghoulish manner of journalists on the hunt…’
• Stories that are increasingly shocking - search for the shocking ‘like a drug’
• Something unique - ‘pictures that stun the editors one day…’
• Take the readers out of their comfort zone

Question 3

Context

Answer 3

• An extract from his autobiography where he wrote about his life and experiences as a tv reporter working mainly in Africa
• This passage is about a report he made covering the cicvil war in Somalia for the BCC

Question 4

What do news companies not want to show/report?

Answer 4

• Yesterday’s news - ‘old pictures are written off as the same old stuff’
• Anything too disturbing/ graphic - ‘the degeneration of the human body’
• Journalist’s own disgust - ‘it’s a disgusting thing, we never say so in our reports
• People becoming inured (desensitised)to the horrors of war

Question 5

What do we learn about TV audiences from this passage?

Answer 5

-Aloft and separate from the suffering of others - ‘ the comfort of their sitting rooms back at home’

-Inured to tragedies of others - ‘search for the shocking…’
search also implies audience’s search.

• Need more frequent and heavier does of the shocking
• Ignorant of more disturbing crimes against humanity, ignorant of the tragedy against individuals - ‘famine of quiet suffering and lonely death
• Voyeurism - a person that derives pleasure from observing
• We don’t expect bias/judgement from reporter, no emotions

Question 6

The Smile :)

Answer 6

-It reverses roles of reporter and subject - ‘turned tables on this tacit agreement.’ Usually the journalist reacts - ‘a smile not from me, but from the face’

-It asks questions which cut to the heart of the writer-‘How should I feel to be standing so strong and confident?’
‘The man had posed a question…’

-It stimulates action by the writer - ‘I resolved then and there I that would write the story…’
‘I had to find out’

-It affects the writer very powerfully - ‘moved me beyond pity and revulsion’ this simple display of emotion.
‘face I will never forget’

Question 7

Contradictions/Irony

Answer 7

• ‘feeble smile that goes with an apology’ - ironic this man smiles a smile of guilt even though all he has done is suffer at the hands of others
• Being unsettled by the smile. Usually smiles are reassuring/friendly
• Smiling in the midst of such poverty
• ‘to be in a feeding centre is…’ - ironic that feeding centre does not deal with food but excrement

Question 8

Language features

Answer 8

1. Emotive language to convey the world of victims
   - adjectives to emphasise their poverty/poor quality of life e.g ‘hungry, lean, scared’
   - powerful language to generate stronger emotions in the reader e.g ‘resolved’ instead of decided and ‘revulsion’ instead of disgust
   - use of repetition to covey hopelessness of life - ‘ no rage, no whimpering’ Suggests that Habiba died without reluctance and living was hell on earth, death a blessing.
2. Informal language to provide writing with a sense of familiarity which allows the reader to empathise with those being described. - ‘same old stuff’ ‘I owe you one’
3. Words that give a vivid image of the world of tv journalist:

• they are like predators - ‘on the hunt’
• they may not display any emotions in reports but they still feel it and can do nothing about it
• the callousness of journalism - ‘taboo that has yet to be reached’
• journalists like drug addicts

4. Simple, declarative statements and short sentences - ‘Habiba had died’ Cruelty of existence, rather dispassionate
5. Sentence structure is varied to engage the reader:

• Incomplete sentences used for effect- shows the sense it’s continuing - ‘And then there was the face I will never forget’
• Short and sharp for impact - ‘Habiba had died’
• Long, descriptive sentences to describe unimaginable suffering, drawn out process
• Use of colon in a sentence to explain meaning of metaphor