Compare how the writers of text one and text two convey their ideas and experiences.

Support Your answer with examples from both texts.

Text one, ‘In the empire of Genghis Khan’ and text two, ‘A passage to Africa’ are both travelogues
written from first person perspective. In text one, the writer experiences a different culture wedding
where they used ‘an old Russian truck’ to replace ‘rolls’ and put up biscuits and cheese on tiers ‘like
wedding cakes’. In text two, the writer talks about his experience of seeing ‘thousand hungry, lean,
scared and betrayed faces’ in Somalia after the civil war and how he had seen people ‘rotting’ there.

Both the writers describe their experiences using long descriptive sentences and paragraphs. In text one,
the writer uses a long descriptive sentence, “Apparently a wedding breakfast would have been given to
the groom… consumption of arkhi” Using this sentence, the writer explains the traditions of the foreign
wedding involving maths which humours the readers and makes the text entertaining. In text two,
although the writer uses long descriptive sentences it doesn’t give out a humourous vibe instead it
makes the readers understand the pain the people in Somalia were facing. “You could see it in her sick,
yellow eyes…struggling breath she took.” In this sentence, the writer gives description of a women
‘rotting’ to death after being shot in the leg.

The tone of text one is humourous and entertaining while the tone of text two is grim and full of pain
and sadness. The writer talks about how the people used ‘biscuits, slabs of cheese and boiled sweets’ as
a replacement for the wedding cake. The writer also makes text one humourous by mentioning how the
bride’s sister ‘fell headfirst from the tailgate’. On the other hand, in text two, the writer uses emotive
language to describe his experience of seeing dying women and a man who kept his hoe near him which
will be used to ‘shroud his corpse’ one day. He also talks about people suffering from ‘hunger and
disease’. These makes the readers feel pity and remorse towards the African people because of their
judgements.

In text one, the writer uses foreign words like, ‘arkhi’ and ‘ger’ which helps the reader feel entertained
and excited while reading the text. The adjective ‘dishevelled’ adds to the entertainment and humor
that is already present in the text. The readers find it rather amusing to see a disarranged wedding
which is quite an irony. In text two, the writer uses verbs like ‘suffering’ and ‘despair’ and adjectives like
‘feeble’ to describe the conditions of the survivors of the civil war. This gives a negative tone to the text
and makes the readers feel bad for the people in Africa and change their judgement towards them.

Text one has an informal tone while text two contains more of a formal tone. In text one, the writer’s
use of foreign phrases and entertaining descriptions make the text less formal and more informal which
entertains the readers and make the text interesting. In text two, the writer manages to keep up a
formal tone as he keeps on describing. The formal tone of the text give off seriousness to the reader and
they give their full attention into understanding what’s going on in Somalia.