How do you analyze a political cartoon?

welcome back history infatuates! today we learned about the messages that Political Cartoons convey. when i see a political cartoons i first just look at the image, try to see if i recognize any people or objects in the cartoon. next of course i read the caption or the words on the cartoon and see if i can connect the dots with the people in the cartoon. while looking at the cartoon you have to multitask, you have to determine who the artist is communicate with, while trying to see you are the audience, and try to figure out what this cartoon means.

i just researched about how to properly analyze a political cartoon, what i learned is that you have to look for these certain things when analyzing a political cartoon: symbolism, exaggeration, labeling, analogy, and irony. then after you have identified these techniques you can ask yourself the questions like: what issue is this political cartoon about? what is the cartoonist's opinion on this issue? and what are the other opinions that can be thought of when other people are looking at this cartoon?

since this guide looks pretty straight forward, i am going to use this guide for analyzing political cartoon.




this cartoon is showing how mckinley is being a coward and not letting america fight with the spanish. i can tell this by seeing that mckinley is holding uncle sam back from crossing the ocean to go fight with the spanish.



with this source you can tell that all three countries: cuba, hawaii and philippines, are all excited that the US had saved them. you can tell this by all three countries (represented by people) are all skipping, holding hands and are all holding american flags. plus the caption under the picture also helps with it by saying "hurrah for the fourth of July!" which is americas independence day.


this cartoon shows america and spain consulting about the philippine conflict. i know this because i can see america and spain talking very closely and you can see that spain has a knife behind his back, which also plays of the saying "he is a backstabber" or " he will stab you in the back". you can tell it is about the philippine conflict by the sinking ship in the background, like all the spaniards ships that were sunk.


thanks for reading!!
xoxo ellie