Ted Rall Comic Strip Analysis

 

The text is a blog written by Ted Rall on 23 March 2009. Ted Rall is a political cartoonist in Los Angeles Times and also worked as a graphic artist, columnist and novelist at breaking modern and new domain websites. 

The main idea of the blog questions mankind’s carelessness towards environmental protection, which might lead to disruption of the global world in the upcoming times. 

The writer illustrates this idea through main themes, including a lack of sense of responsibility, human dependence on environmental care authorities, and our selfishness by considering global warming as an inconsiderable issue. 

During the illustration on these themes, the writer used different graphical approaches, diction, and a few stylistic devices.

The title "when we'll take our environment seriously" in bold font conforms to the theme of the lack of sense of responsibility of the young generation audience towards earth care. 

Additionally, the presentation of three different scenarios in different images with dialogues helps readers to self-reflect upon the ongoing precautions they confront every day towards global warming. 

The dialogues in the images “meat cattle have become endangered species”,’’ water shortages” and “air is too polluted” creates an awakening emphasis on readers to illuminate the seriousness of the situation. 

Also, the way dialogues are designed in lesser size font might grab greater attention of the audience towards it. It compels their mind to comprehend the significance of resources that are naturally provided by the earth, thus might lead to a certain message of understanding their responsibility as human beings on earth. 

Then, the writer uses a phrase as a way of asking a question to the audience “What would it take for that to change?”. This also shows his frustration towards human nature of excluding themselves from their job. Eventually, these schemas of the human mind cause them to pass down their responsibility to healthcare authorities to keep the environment preserved.

The theme of human dependence on environmental protection authorities can be observed in all three images presented by the writer. 

In the first image appeals i.e.pathos expressed by the writer through a man’s shocked expression can be interpreted as making people realize the importance of earth care due to the precaution of water shortages made by the authorities posted in different places to persuade people to at least think about it. 

The dependence on such emotion to feel that earth needs care can be observed by the readers while reading precautionary phrases. Then, the comment written by one of the audiences states ‘All this doom and gloom is so self-serving’.

From this readers can understand that we humans are not realizing the fact that we are endangering ourselves by behaving carelessly.

The phrase in the last image “make it stop” presents the high dependence of people on authorities as readers can interpret that we humans don't consider it as our responsibility to stop environmental harm, but we perceived this as others' job to make it stop. 

The setting of the room presented by ted also shows the temporary effect of news affecting humans at that certain point in time, which enables them to pass down a few comments. 

Readers can observe humans act of blaming the government and country authorities to take care of our surroundings, and afterwards, again employing the same careless attitude, leading to developing a sense of selfishness among people.

The theme of human selfishness towards the environment is majorly highlighted by the writer while using Parataxis “The arctic melts. The Gulf Stream stutters. Average temperatures rise. Species go extinct.”

The pauses in parataxis impact the audience to recognize the hazard we are causing to our nature. It can be illustrated as silence for human selfishness for not considering themselves the reason for such drastic changes in the environment. 

A phrase used in one of the comments written by the audience that “It assumes that man is all that important. If you are talking time, we are a blip." This shows the perception of the audience that it not only affects nature but it also affects other animal species. 

Hence, readers can realise that their negligence not only harms their surroundings, but they are also indirectly killing species leading to their instinct toward the environment. 

Additionally, the audience states a reference while commenting that “man will be remembered (if at all) as that bad zit* that ruined a teenage weekend.” this shows how people are tired to make us understand that endangering the environment is as important as any global issue. 

Readers can observe the sarcastic tone employed by the audience themselves while realizing how dangerous a man could be. 

Conclusively, the blog with its cartoonist nature and content majorly helps readers to perceive the actual impact to realize the importance of natural instincts on earth. 

The way the writer promoted his message through an online platform highly leads to grabbing the attention of a greater mass of the audience. The theme of lack of sense of responsibility towards keeping the environment safe leads to grasping the concept of thinking about our faults. 

Similarly, the theme of human dependence on authorities regarding environmental protection leads to act as an eye-opener for the audience to work independently.