Drunk+Driving

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=El Ultimo Trago= El Ultimo Trago, or The Last Drink is a cartoon that depicts the dangers of drunk driving. In the United States alone, drunk driving accounts for nearly 10,000 deaths a year, or nearly 31% of all traffic related deaths in the United States (Center for Disease Control). This means that, on average, somebody dies every 53 minutes in a drunk driving crash, as well as somebody being injured every two minutes due to drunk driving. For such an entirely preventable crime, these numbers indicate that drunk driving is a serious issue that we face, even though during our schooling we are taught multiple times about its dangers. El Ultimo Trago tries to depict the seriousness of this issue by showing that every time you drive drunk, you are falling for death’s trap.

El Ultimo Trago depicts a visibly drunk man reaching for a bottle of alcohol that is lying on a large mouse trap, while death is waiting on the side. The entire image is done in black and white to enhance the message of death. The stark contrast between the two colors illustrates the dark setting of the cartoon. The artist uses the white as the canvas, while the black is used as the focus. This helps to make the death as the focus of the cartoon, as the grim reaper, the road, the man, and the alcohol are shown with the use of the black. The less important bottles in the background are shown with a lot less black, while the bottle in the foreground and all the other important aspects of the cartoon are shown with a lot heavier use of black. Death is shown in its most common depiction as the Grim Reaper, with a dark robe on as a white skeleton and is shown wielding a large scythe and a bottle in the other hand. This is interesting as the scythe is commonly associated as the tool that death uses to reap the souls of the people. Death holding a bottle in the other hand is done to signify that alcohol is another tool death uses to reap souls. The man in the image is shown to be visibly drunk through the use of swirly eyes, bubbles hovering around his head, and the words “Hip! Hip!” The swirly eyes are used to represent the blurred vision of the man, showing that he is not able to see straight due to him being intoxicated. The bubbles coming out of his head and his words are used to indicate how his thinking is impaired and so are his words. The artist illustrates the deathtrap that is drunk driving by having the man reach for a bottle of alcohol that’s lying on a large mousetrap. The bottles lying on the sides of the road in the background infer to the audience that this isn’t the first time that this man is driving drunk. The artist is using this to illustrate that even if you managed to escape death before when driving drunk, it always catches up to you.

The artist primarily uses the appeal of emotions to inform the audience about the dangers of drunk driving. The audience is shown how that even though the dangers of the bottle of alcohol on the trap is very obvious to us, the drunk man is unaware of it due to his impaired vision and thinking. The Grim Reaper depiction of death is used to evoke the sensation of death by having the Grim Reaper stand right next to the car that the man is driving as he reaches for another bottle. The artist also tries to appeal to our logic by using the bottles in the background to show that you are risking your life every time you drive drunk, and it is only a matter of time before its consequences can be fatal.

Overall, the artist of El Ultimo Trago effectively utilizes the images in the cartoon to get across the dangers of drunk driving. The depiction of death along with the use of colors help to highlight the message. The details in the illustration of the man help to highlight the effects of alcohol on a person’s mind and body, and how that if paired with driving, it can have very fatal consequences. = Works Cited =

"Impaired Driving: Get the Facts." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 26 Jan. 2017. Web. 06 Feb. 2017. El Ultimo Trago. Digital image. N.p., 2007. Web. 6 Feb. 2017.