From A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat is an extract of travel writing based in Pakistan. Emma Levine documents her experience of a reckless donkey race in Karachi.
From the beginning of this extract the reader is drawn into the fast pace story. In her first paragraph she uses colloquial language to give the feel of an informal piece of writing. Levine has made humour a major element from the beginning of the extract. The use of humour is exemplified when the writer includes a familiar image by comparing this race to the famous cartoon animations, "Wacky Races". At this point, she tries to involve the Western culture with that of the Eastern one, by adding a pinch of Western aspect in a quite humorous and indeed an interesting manner. This adds a sense of humour to the piece and it performs well with the colloquial language used to set a phlegmatic tone for the reader. As she goes on to describe her two accompaniments she is able to characterise them then with the label, ‘lads’ as this gives the idea of two young and enthusiastic boys. ‘Oh yes, that’s no problem,’ this fragment of direct speech, located at