Purchase of Alaska

Purchase of  Alaska

  The cartoon is about how the United States purchasing Alaska from Russia was a waste of money and the man who made the purchase was William Seward so it was nicknamed Seward's Icebox. Evidence is seen in the background with a Russian solider walking away with a sack of money leaving the Americans to deal with the "icebox". Though Alaska turned out to be great for the United States as it was filled with natural resources. The cartoonists message on the issue is that The United States or William Seward should not have bought Alaska because it was a waste of money for a giant block of ice. You can see this because instead of a cart with  money or resources it contains a block of ice. Though this would be expected as not much was known about Alaska at the time. I think Native Americans living there might have had a different opinion on the cartoon. They probably view it as a precious land full of wildlife and they might have had religious ties with the land. They were probably very angry at the Americans for not really caring about them and not giving them the same rights and options as the Russians. It think the author used two different techniques. The first one is Symbolism because the the giant chunk of ice in the cart represents how Alaska was seen as nothing but ice and a waste of money. The second technique is  labeling because in the background you see a Russian soldier with a bag that says 7,000,000 showing that we just just spent millions of dollar on a Russian American as shown on the chunk of ice. 

Citation:
"Political Cartoon - Alaska 1867." Political Cartoon - Alaska 1867. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2016. <https://sites.google.com/site/alaska1867turnup/olitical-cartoon-3>.


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