Gary Varvel Political Cartoon

The cartoon above is captioned ¨This is the Problem¨, and it was illustrated by Gary Varvel. Gary Varvel is a well known political cartoonist and he has a wide variety of cartoons available for viewing on a website called ¨The Indy Star¨. Varvel has been the editorial artist for ¨The Star¨ for about 22 years, and he was previously the chief artist for the Indianapolis News for 16 years. All of his work was publicized by multiple sources, for example the Indy Star and the Indianapolis News (Varvel).
This particular political cartoon is up for interpretation in many ways because it does not display any well-known politicians or physical places in the government. Therefore, there is nothing familiar to me in it besides the symbols that are displayed. I recognize the two politicians as being part of two different political parties because of the symbols on the buttons attached to their suits. The politician on the left is wearing a button with an image of a donkey on it, which I know is the symbol that stands for Democrats. The politician on the right, however, is wearing a button with an image of an elephant on it, …show more content…
The parties are stating who or what they believe is the problem in the issue of gun violence. When you look at the two pictures shown in the cartoon that the politicians are pointing at, there is an M-16 rifle in one picture and a terrorist in the other picture. Both sides seem to have very strong opinions on the subject, however, it seems they can’t agree. The men have two different buttons pinned to their chests, which represents the Democratic and the Republican parties, both of which have different strong feelings on the issue of gun violence. The Democrats seem to think that the guns are the problem with today's society issues that involve gun violence. The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to believe that terrorists are the