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Vitaly OConnor
Mrs. Olivia Rines
UWRT-1101
25th January 2015
Political Cartoons
Exploring a genre I know little of, excites me. I remember being a child and viewing political
cartoons in different newspapers, I would always recall accumulated information Ive heard or seen in
the news or overheard from elders. But even then I never truly comprehended the dry, crude, sarcastic
etc. humor in such art until I was older. I remember the ill abstract drawings that sometimes scared me
of from further investigating a piece, the wording was sarcastically crude and I rarely understood the
ambiguous humor that so many others may have found funny.
Political cartoons are a fascinating way of showing the behind the science in political issues or
events. They are funny if an individual understands the issue behind the drawing. Sadly humor is not the
soul purpose of such project, but instead it is to persuade or manipulate the viewer to understand and
perhaps take part of what the creator intends. Do not get me wrong, the persuasion breaks down in a
category of its own, depending on exactly what the artist intends to bring to life, it may be happy, sad,
cruel, mean etc. but it all depends on what the purpose of the persuasion is by the creator. In the
following few sentences the purpose for the persuasion is to achieve unity. In the 1700s, Benjamin
Franklins Join or Die was to be the first political cartoon to be known in America. In which the
sliced up snake represents the broken colonies, but the concept was based on a popular superstition that
a snake cut in two, if put back together by sunset, would indeed come back to life. The bigger picture

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was the lost unity within the colonies; Benjamin Franklin was trying to get the people to understand that
if they were to fight the British one colony at a time, then they would fall one by one. It was the division
that was to break them apart and a humble understanding was to save them from the unfortunate event.
Trace Hodgson I found to give a very understandable accurate description. He states the
following: Political cartoons (also known as editorial cartoons) are defined as illustrations or comic
strips containing a political or social message that usually relates to current events or personalities.
(Trace Hodgson1) He goes on to state several techniques that an individual editorial cartoon

artist may use to persuade the audience. Such as Symbols, caricatures, stereotypes, analogies
etc. I will go in complete detail later. Charles Press, author of Political Cartooning states four
qualities necessary to accomplishing effective political cartons. The first according to Charles
Press is artistic quality. And Ill continue the topic below. The main point is, one mustnt only
understand the definition to a certain genre, in this case Political Cartooning, there are many
small significant and some insignificant but non the less just as important when it comes to
create the genre. In this case its to persuade a viewer to perhaps take part in understanding an
event through a illustration, simple and awkwardly directly specified (if one can understand
from previous sources) or series of events within the topic, it may be news, random
conversations about a certain accumulation of the topic, radio, etc. Its not as much of how one
receives the information, its more of the perception and understanding they achieve from the
event or issue. That allows them to comprehend a political cartoon based on the information
already known.

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1.

Hodgson,Trace.PoliticalCartoons.Wellington,N.Z.:WellingtonCity
ArtGallery,1986.Web.
<http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/forstudents/ww2
history/ataglance/politicalcartoonsnapshot.pdf>.

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2.

"PartI:ABriefHistoryofPoliticalCartoons."PartI:ABriefHistoryof
PoliticalCartoons.N.p.,n.d.Web.25Jan.2015.
<http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/puck/part1.html>.