In A Passage to Africa by George Alagiah, the author used his own realistic depictions, his

reaction to reality and that gives the reader an idea of how he feels. Though his usage of
specific language, he can convey a “sense of suffering” to the reader. The language consists of
the clarity of the circumstances faced by the Somalians during a terrible war, and multiple terms
and phrases that overall enhances the readers experience and touch in this passage.

“I saw a thousand, lean, scared and betrayed faces”, Alagiah uses a list of adjectives to show the
images of these people suffering. The people are “betrayed”, that is a peculiar choice of
vocabulary. Usually, the word means that someone feels that another is disloyal, but the use in
this passage means to convey a feeling that the country and the leaders has “failed” them. They
are suffering. The author also depicts the village using a simple sentence: “Like a ghost village.”.
This simple sentence has great impact on the reader. The use of a simile here evokes pathos,
which is emotion in the audience. Describing a village as a “ghost” is the equivalence of calling it
the middle of nowhere. It is made clear by the author that this village is known by no one, and
that the people’s suffering is also unknown.

Then Alagiah provided detailed descriptions about the people that he had observed. When he
wrote about Habiba and Ayaan, his language choice of describing their hunger. He used the
word “enervating”, this word showed the dreadful stages of their hunger, the final and the most
painful steps before death. The hunger was “terminal”, that meant they were suffering to an
extent that they were just alive. Then Habiba died, that showed the ruthlessness of nature and
war in front of humans. The realness of the depictions of the family of Amina just raised the
passage to a point where the people were half-dead. The contrast between the frightening and
the mundane, "same old stuff," "dirt floor," "hut," and "sitting rooms" heightens sympathy by
highlighting the disparity between our way of life and that of people impacted by the famine.

He arouses sympathy by demonstrating the extent of misery he has witnessed. He recounts

events ranging from a mother with her kids to an elderly woman, all of whom are affected by
the war: the girls are experiencing "terminal hunger" in addition to ordinary hunger, and the
elderly woman is severely injured but still alive. Alagiah uses a combination of soft and harsh
language to describe the old woman's leg as "gently" curved and the girl's death as "simple,
frictionless, motionless." By repeating the soft sibilants in the word "less," Alagiah suggests that
death happens easily. It's disturbing how simple it is.