Adichie And Zephaniah Analysis

In both these pieces, Adichie and Zephaniah have expressed their experiences of being misunderstood and how that created problems in their lives and in others lives as well. They presented their problems in different ways. Adichie has presented in a speech format for presenting it in Ted Talks, whereas Zephaniah has presented it in an article format for the renowned The Guardian daily mail. Despite their main base plot is very similar, they have used different structural and literary language techniques in the pieces, which creates different tones and moods in their extracts.

In Adichie’s extract, the tone is very light-hearted and occasionally humorous as she reflects back to her past incidents. She doesn’t consider her anecdotes very seriously and views them in a light manner. One example would be her reference to her friend being disappointed “when she produced a Mariah Carey tape”. Even though this is an example of stereotyping and racism, Adichie has presented the situation in a way that seemed like it was a ‘joke’ or a very negligible offense. This also sets a very cheerful mood for the audience (listeners) as they feel connected with the situation because they relate with reason for the situation to be
Another similarity is how both of the pieces are mainly structured on anecdotal evidence. Also, throughout their extracts, they have direct ‘contact’ with the audience, i.e. they are giving direct opinions, solutions and questions which are aimed for the audience. Zephaniah and Adichie have both used parallel lines, which helps emphasise a view or point. In Zephaniah’s text, he talked about how dyslexic people have got it going on that “they are architects, they are designers” and Adichie mentions how “stories matter, many stories matter”. They also both make a distinctive ending paragraph where the language makes it obvious that they are concluding the