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Michael A. Vinegar
Intro to Rhetoric and Professional Writing
October 22, 2015
Document Analysis

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

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Introduction
The presidential election is just over the horizon. The nation is readying to select
their next leader! People are out watching debates and reading articles and
analyzing arguments of potential candidates to get a better gist of who to vote in.
With the recent controversy in Florida, when Bush won despite losing the popular
vote, one might wonder, what is the true path to the White House? Honestly, the
election of the President of the United States is one of the most misconceived
procedures in the modern world. When the day comes in early November, droves of
citizens arrive at the polls to vote for their best conceived candidate on the ballot.
After everyone in the country votes, we tally the totals across the states and it is
widely assumed that the candidate with the most votes from the popular vote will
win. Yay, go democracy! After seeing this editorial cartoon, one might question the
entire election process. It appears to be a maze leading to the White House and the
entrance into that maze is controlled by the Electoral College System??? Who or
what is the Electoral College system? The overall intent of this document produced
by editorial cartoonist Dave Granlund is to inform and provoke the audience to
question the voting system and election procedures for the office of president. In
my opinion, the illustrator nailed it.
This political event is riddled with back office hollows and shifty go-betweens and
the entire concept of some top-gun team of voting professionals - the Electoral
College - is confusing, somewhat secretive and out of the publics control. This is
elegantly expressed in the cartoon I provided on page 1 entitled, The Path to the
White House by Dave Granlund.

Rhetorical Analysis
In editorial cartoons the complicated is made simple through visual means. There is
something about the innocence of a cartoon and how it boils the meaning out of
complicated concepts and instantly provides a heightened understanding on an
intellectual level. The editorial cartoon is metaphorically sound and resounding in
rhetoric. The images used to convey understanding come with meanings and
feelings that are common to the masses. This is accomplished through the manner
by which editorial cartoons are composed and how the parts fuse together creating
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a comfortable mental space for the audience to grasp understanding. Its like
stand-up comedy in print form. There something of a performance going on, but
there is also a lesson at stake. There is something the audience needs to know, and
through an imitation of the truth, the editorial cartoon is successful at making these
connections to provoke emotional conviction and intellectual thought.
Editorial cartoons consist mainly of two elements which are caricature and allusion.
Caricature parodies the individual, which could be a person or an event or a
common situation and allusion creates the situation or context into which the
individual is placed. Here the caricature is the process of voting being fixed to the
White House in place of the literal fence that would surround it in reality. In this
cartoon, the process is portrayed as a maze controlled by the Electoral College
system and this maze serves as the fence that secures entry into the White House.
The allusion here is that there is more to the voting process than the average citizen
would think. We all know what a maze is. We all know that you may go into a
maze, but that does not mean you are going to find your way out. It is absolutely
possible to get lost in a maze for long periods of time. Mazes are challenging on
purpose and hard to escape. Why would this imagery be used to explain the voting
procedures? Is my voice, my vote, going to get lost in that maze? Will the general
truth get stuck in that maze? I thought voting was simple. You go to vote, they
count the votes, and the most votes indicate the winner. In most peoples minds,
the path to the White House is through the popular vote which is a very simple
procedure. 1 + 1 = 2 type of deal. If the popular conception of the voting
procedure were swapped into this image, at the entrance youd see Popular Vote
instead of Electoral College system, the maze would not be a maze at all, but
instead maybe a straight and narrow path or an square flight of stairs heading to
the White House as opposed to its current depiction traveling through the
turbulence tunnels in the maze of the Electoral College because in most peoples
minds, voting is not this complicated. This contrast in reasoning about the reality of
the process creates the snap mentally that there is some hidden information. From
this the audience is emotionally drawn to protect their rights, intellectually confused
because they obviously have the information misconstrued, so they now search for
the truth. This image suggests strongly and correctly that there is definitely more
to voting than just counting the popular vote. This picture is not allowing the
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audience to remain comfortable in the idea that the popular vote carries substantial
significance. It provokes them to research, google and dig up more information
about the Electoral College and find out just what this thing is and how it affects the
path of my vote. This is serious business!

Conclusion
But its still just a cartoon, and its enjoyable finding understanding in the images
alone. Its enjoyable noticing the devices chosen by the artist to depict meaning.
Its entertaining to see the creativity in the overall presentation of the information.
Purposed exaggerations of reality lined with a touch of comical lightheartedness
intended to ignite serious thought is the essence of the editorial cartoon. The
content is real, the images arent, but they do bare an uncanny resemblance to that
which is reality and raise awareness. There is a serious message imbedded in this
entertaining animation, and I believe the purpose of this cartoon is clear and
successful.

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