In paragraph 3 the writer tells us that they have seen so much horror that they can't appreciate it any longer. wonderful book! so well-written, funny and erudite. It gives a wonderful overview of some of Africa's most harrowing histories. I was really impressed with the chapter on Mandela. There are no sacred cows and lots of villains in this book. Makes us all look at ourselves a little harder. He is writing reflectively and his attitude towards the events seems to have changed since he originally reported on the event. This seems most clear in the final line, when he discusses his regret at not knowing the man’s name. It suggests that his purpose and empathy level is different now that it was then. language

The passage describes the journalists as 'ghoulish' while searching for 'striking pictures', showing how they may not be searching for them for the right reasons. There’s pity, too, because even in this state of utter despair they aspire to a dignity that is almost impossible to achieve. An old woman will cover her shriveled body with a soiled cloth as your gaze turns towards her. Or the old and dying man who keeps his hoe next to the mat with which, one day soon, they will shroud his corpse, as if he means to go out and till the soil once all this is over.

abandoned by relations who were too weak to carry her on their journey' - creates sympathy for her, as a reader thinks of their own family abandoning them, and the way in which she's been abandoned by the world. Yet it doesn't blame the family, because they have to find food for themselves, so cannot care for her. This shows the extreme choices people have to make in this famine. The repetition of 'smile' in these paragraphs shows his fascination with it, then when his translator explains the smile it is revealed that smile was an 'apology' for being in such a bad conditions, as though 'you had done something wrong.' This makes the reader feel pity, and shame themselves because the man feels that he has to apologise for himself, despite having done nothing wrong.

passage to Africa’- ambiguous title, could mean anything like a journey to Africa or more likely a dedication to Africa (his purpose is to serve Africa in some way)George Alagiah is a BBC newsreader. He used to be a reporter and he was sent to Africa to cover the events that unfolded in the 1990s in Somalia. At this time, there was a civil war and the people encountered many difficulties. In this story “From Passage to Africa”, George Alagiah 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 Alagiah 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.

Even in these moments of desperation and impoverishment, the people are ashamed of the predicament that was forced upon them, they are ashamed of being weak. This makes George think, if helplessness makes them ashamed what should people like him, who are healthy and in search of suffering to make money out of it feel about their actions as they carry on without lending the people a helping hand? A Passage To Africa | Context In vivid and evocative prose and with a fine eye for detail, Alagiah’s viewpoint is spiked with the freshness of the young George on his arrival in Ghana, the wonder with which he recounts his first impressions of Africa and the affection with which he dresses his stories of his early family life.Normally inured to stories of suffering, accustomed to the evidence of deprivation, I was unsettled by this one smile in a way I had never been before. There is an unwritten code between the journalist and his subjects in these situations. George Alagiah 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 Alagiah is able to engage the reader as they are imagining the smell of the decaying flesh. The following description of the old wounded woman lying ‘abandoned’ in her hut acts as proof for the prior admission that such scenes aren’t news worthy. ‘Decaying flesh’: a hyperbole which does not necessarily seem like one arise the sense of smell along with adjectives such as ‘rotting’. The ellipses before the explanation of her wound show the writer’s hesitation before he describes the army shooting at an old lady as ‘revenge’, making one wonder exactly how brutal and ruthless they must have been if the most subtle euphemism for their action is ‘revenge’. The paradox in ‘the gentle V-shaped boomerang’ casts a ghastly and vivid mental picture of the wound, as well as draws attention to the fact that an old lady is suffering from a war wound. Pathos and pity is evoked in the reader by the next paragraph, its impact strengthened by the use of names as the plight of two daughters and their mother is described. The anaphora in ‘no rage, no whimpering’, the dash followed by adjectives such as ‘motionless, simple and frictionless’; all are used to diminish death, as if it is a matter of no importance or significance, an everyday occurring which is inevitable. Seeing death up close on a daily basis, Alagiah feels that it is rather life which is the difficult part, as in seen by his description of the girl’s existence as a ‘half-life’ and her death as ‘deliverance’ as if life is a punishment, something to be saved from. It is the list of 3 adjectives that create the pity and empathy that we feel for the situation. Another example is: