Once I stumbled across this cartoon, I immediately decided to do my essay post over it. I chose this one in particular because it brings me back to Sunday mornings while I was still in grade school. Since my father writes for the
Tulsa World, Sunday's paper always made an appearance on the counter top. Reading through all the "funny pages," as my dad called them, became a ritual of mine. The comic strip
Pickles, from which the cartoon below originated, always had a spot on the second page.
There are so many aspects of this cartoon that remind me of growing up. Thanks to my father's constant corrections, I learned from a young age to place my apostrophes appropriately. Some of the dialogue in the last panel could easily be heard in my household. On that note, this cartoon reminds me of the dynamic that exists among many families. I can attest to the fact that a good amount of light-hearted teasing can really make a family jibe well. For example, it's well-known that my sister does a great job at keeping me humble.
From here, I will shift my focus onto the content of the cartoon itself. In my opinion, a large part of the humor comes from the strong sense of dramatic irony in the last panel. Just as the man does not catch the fact his wife is indeed criticizing him, the wife does not seem to notice that she's breaking the very resolution she just declared. Beyond that, there is a bit of a paradox here that draws attention to the fact that these characters reside in a comic strip. Since "your" and "you're" are pronounced the same, there is no way the wife would have noticed the error unless she were able to see the word written. I'm willing to bet that the cartoonist intended this to be the case. After all, one should have room to experiment when writing a comic strip.
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