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Throughtout History, Illustrations and Paintings Have Played with Our Emotions

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Throughout history, notorious and creative people have used illustrations and paintings to play on people’s emotions. One of the most famous examples of this was during World War I, with the use of propaganda posters to increase nationalistic feelings towards one’s own country. Through the mass production and creativity of the posters, many young men enlisted in their nation’s army to protect and support their country throughout the war.
This first poster (see Figure 1) was used by Germans during World War I; on the bottom part of the poster there German writing which translates out to, “It is essential that the last blows achieve victory! Subscribe to the War Loan!” This is simply saying that, “in order to finish off the war, you need…show more content…
This represents that the very well-dressed man is hiding in the shadows from the war; that he is trying to hide himself from the war altogether. On the other side of the window, there is light outside that has several lines of marching soldiers, with the American Flag flying right above them. Having the American flag flying above these soldiers, gives the sense that they are heroes for going to fight this war. Having the well-dressed man inside and the marching soldiers outside shows the viewer that the men who stay home and tremble in fear of the war do not deserve glory. On the other hand the soldiers that are outside deserve glory.
Finally this last poster (see Figure 3) was used for English propaganda. In the background there is a burning building and two lines of soldiers. The lines of soldiers could represent two things: one being that the British army is much smaller compared to Germany’s. The second is that in the line of soldiers, there appears to be a few empty spots which could correlate to the question at the top of the poster that asks, “WHO’S ABSENT?” and then asks another question at the bottom which is, “Is it you?” These two questions are directed at British men (usually between the ages of 18
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