I was very excited about this week because we were covering the Franklin I am most familiar with – the political icon -- the man who was capable of uniting factious bodies with a well-planned doodle. The success of “Join or Die” lies for me in the simplicity of the concept. Each state represents a portion of the snake, and even if just one part was cut off the snake could not survive. The message is crystal clear in fact it is a political ultimatum. Clearly the work is successful, but I was intrigued to read Rattlesnakes for Felons a, which I would argue more successfully utilizes the image of a snake. I looked over the timeline of the works, and Rattlesnakes for Felons is written three years prior to Join or Die. In Rattlesnakes, it is clear why the comparison to lethal snakes works. But I wonder why later Franklin would represent his own country as stealth and venomous. The cartoon could even work if it was simply a human whose limbs were shown as dismembered (technically I suppose you would not die, but perhaps bleed out? And maybe you would die in this era of medicine?). Nevertheless, food for thought. I wonder as to why the class thinks the image of the snake for the colonies was chosen? Do you think it was for simplicity’s sake or a deeper symbolism?
Unlike Join or Die, I had never read Rattlesnakes for Felons, and the play on a normal notion, finding a solution for Britain’s convicts, reminds me very much of Swift’s A Modest Proposal. By drawing the comparison of a rattlesnake, it very directly creates strong imagery of why exporting criminals, who are detrimental to a society, is an ill informed solution. I love the aside, that not only should they be imported, they should be distributed among those who implemented the policy. The images are hilarious, and also quite vivid. “There I propose to have them [thousands of imported rattlesnakes] carefully distributed … in the Gardens of the Prime Ministers, the Lords of Trade, and Members of Parliament; for to them we are most particularly obliged” After this, the piece takes a more serious turn, as he explains the damage and death the convicts can cause. His comparison can best be exemplified in his own words, when he drives home his final point “Rattle-Snakes seem the most suitable returns for the human serpents sent us by our mother country”. I think these two snake driven works show the political power of Franklin’s prose.
