Target Audience

Readers of newspapers/magazines that live in more favourable conditions

Tone

At the beginning, callous, inured and distanced

What might have appalled us ... no longer impressed us much.

Admits it himself - this sounds callous, the ghoulish manner of journalists

Revulsion for the dying and sick

a mixture of pity and revulsion

The degeneration of the human body ... is a disgusting thing.

Death described dispassionately

same old stuff

o
o

No rage, no whimpering, just a passing away that simple, frictionless, motionless deliverance
from a state of half-life to death itself. It was, as I said at the time in my dispatch, a vision of famine away from the
headlines, a famine of quiet suffering and lonely death.

At the end, more personal (and less distance)

Pities them: they aspire to a dignity that is almost impossible to achieve

Curious of the mans identity

I had to find out.

Regrets the fact that he never found out what the mans name was

Shocked at the smile

Futility - the man will never read the article, even though it is written almost in dedication to him

The unknown mans smile moves him while the hardship of the others do not

In those brief moments there had been a smile, not from me, but from the face. It was not a smile of
greeting, it was not a smile of joy how could it be? but it was a smile nonetheless
Tone changes from almost indifferent to hopeful/hopeless
I resolved there and then that I would write the story of Gufgaduud with all the power and purpose I

o
could muster
o

the only adequate answer a reporter can give to the mans question

Purpose

To shock people
To give readers insight into how a journalist, as opposed to readers, see suffering and hardship and how they
are obligated to report harsher and harsher news

To emphasise the distance between the journalist and the people in the feeding centres

I owe you one - a dedication to the man who smiled

Language is amiable to close the distance between them

Techniques

The search for the shocking is like the craving for a drug - Simile, on the addictive nature of the journalistic
process

She was rotting - hyperbole

The shattered leg had fused into the gentle V-shape of a boomerang - figurative language