TOW #15- Visual Text

Tom Toles, the editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post recently published this cartoon with the caption, "Inexplicable Metro robbery in minute-by-minute detail".  He made this cartoon with the intended audience to be train commuters.  It shows a man reporting his money stolen during his experience on the metro when in fact, he was not actually robbed.  Tom Toles uses hyperbole of an average person's metro experience and humor in order to show the lack of quality of the metro services.  He believes that the prices that are paid for the metro are too high for the efficiency of the system.  Toles uses hyperbole in his cartoon in order to exaggerate the bad quality of the metro system.  The man's second quote is lengthy and describes a terrible situation that I'm sure the average metro user does not experience.  The exaggeration helps Toles's argument by showing his audience how awful the system is and hoping that they can relate to the mishaps that occur with the metro system.  Although the quote is not really valid, it is very effective.  It helps the audience feel a connection by sharing a common annoyance of the trains.  Toles appeals to pathos by attempting to make the audience feel angry about their subpar train experiences that they paid full price for.  Toles also uses humor in order to compare the train experiences with a robbery.  When the man in the cartoon says he was robbed, he is not being literal.  He feels that he had been cheated for his money because of his poor train service.  This is an effective strategy for Toles because if people start associating the poor quality of the trains system with being robbed, that will only increase the anger of the audience.  Once they compare their experience with the metro to being robbed, it puts the idea into perspective.  His audience may think, "If I am not getting 100% satisfactory service, I shouldn't have to pay full price!"  Thoughts like these will help Toles build an audience of angry train commuters that feel that change must be made.  Toles used these devices to successfully convince his audience that the metro system is 'robbing' them of their money because of its poor efficiency and quality.