This political cartoon is called "Fire!" and is written March 29, 1950 by Herblock.
Without any background information at all, my interpretation of this political cartoon was different than after I researched on the topic.
My first look on the political cartoon, I thought that the hand holding the torch represented freedom because it is pretty much similar to the hand of the statue of liberty, but after looking to the figure at the left, it seems that the man on the left, which is probably the United States, is trying to use the pail of water to extinguish the fire. This confused me a little because if the hand and the torch represented freedom, then why would the -let's say the government- want to take it away. With the word HYSTERIA written on him, meaning that he feared the people would have freedom? I don't understand. Or does the hand mean something else? This bothered me so I decided to take it to the next level by doing some research so I could understand what this political cartoon is saying.
After reading a bit on the history of this, I started to get the message of this cartoon. I found out that after World War II, the people of the United States were getting scared of communism and were paranoid that it would slowly sneak into schools and institutes of the US. So this explains the man with HYSTERIA written on him. He does not represent the government, but represents the US citizen and the people living in the US. They are in fear that United States would eventually turn to a communist and instead of fighting it, they are actually hurting their own country by the paranoia and fear. So the man climbing up to extinguish the flame of the Statue of Liberty and as I found "The torch is the strongest symbol that Bartholdi incorporated into the Statue. In fact the Statue's real name reflects its true meaning: "Liberty Enlightening the World"." Meaning that the message of the cartoon is showing the audience, which is the people of the United States, that they are overreacting and is harming their mother country by doing so.
