Comparison Between 'Red Dust And Burnt Happiness'

My style model is in the genre of travel writing. The overall text is a combination of short sentences which are linked together with various cohesive techniques. The text is an individual's journey, in present tense, through the Beijing desert and the events which happen during the exploration. I have reflected this in “Burnt Happiness” by recalling about my travels through Madeira and the emotions that occur from the rich to poor side of the Island.

My writing is similar to Ma Jian in many ways, whilst also having its differences. I have used techniques such as low frequency lexis and similes, as seen in “Red Dust”. However the semantics of Ma Jian's piece is more referring the death shown through her emotive lexis, whereas my journey is more focusing on the different styles of life, either rich or poor on the same Island. Overall “Red Dust” has a negative semantic, whereas my piece starts off as positive when exploring through the rich side of Madeira, and even when locals are introduced there is still a sense of positivity unlike …show more content…
This means that my piece tells more of a story instead of the effect of “Red Dust” which is very short and blunt, “I hear noises.”, which related to its semantics of death and therefore ending quickly. Both pieces contain cohesion meaning that the travel writing flows more onto the next point in the exploration. For example Ma Jian continuously uses connectives such as “Suddenly”, “Instinctively” and “Hurriedly” but also other connectives to flow, for example “Four or five hours go by.” to join all the point to the previous one. I mimicked this by using cohesive lexis in my piece “two hours later” and “losing hope” to help my piece flow to the next point and also let the reader know that time has passed or the emotions the traveller may be