Visual Analysis of a Current Political Cartoon

Introduction

Political cartoons normally appear on the editorial page of daily newspapers. They are focused on events or topical editorials and are essentially visual.

Rhetorical context

Dealing with claims for the liability threatens to exceed the policy limits, either from multiple claimants or horrendous damages, is much like threading a needle. There are major two problems dealing in threading the needle. First is when the liability exceeds the debt limits. The second problem is the growth in the number of taxes directly on the consumers.

The creator's purpose

The purpose for creating this political cartoon was to show that, within the debt limit, the increased number of taxes is lowering the revenues. The taxes should be eliminated to increase revenues.

The original piece

Threading the Needle was published in Roll Call Multimedia on July 5, 2011.

Audience targeted

It was directed to the government. Directly the controllers of the economy were asked that higher taxes are not bringing any benefit to the economy.

Tricks used

Cartoonists use various techniques to get their message across. The cartoon was the top technique of political cartoonists. They often exaggerate the characteristics of a person to make it easily recognizable. Another very useful technique, the analogy is to be an event with another event. Cartoonists sometimes use words (titles, captions, name tags, comments in a bubble or a dialogue) to help the reader. The words help to understand the message, the political cartoon is primarily a visual art and, the cartoonist tries to present situations, often complex, visual form (Dines 1995, 237).

The tricks used are the characters used because characters play a very prominent role. They depict the nature and the impact of the place they are holding. For example, high taxes are depicted through elephant. This means that taxes have a noticeable impact and produce a heavy burden on ...