Bill Mauldin's Up Front

In the book, Up Front by Bill Mauldin, he draws cartoons that portrays a soldiers’ common life, in and outside the fields of war. Willie and Joe are average infantry soldiers in Mauldin’s cartoons, and they are symbolic for sharing the common feelings of other infantry soldiers. Mauldin commonly draws Willie and Joe in a funny predicament to capture common moments of hardship, which are also commonly felt and shared with US soldiers in World War II. Mauldin was a soldier and a cartoonist for The Stars and Stripes, and happily served his country. Similarly, Norman Rockwell, who painted Ours to fight for: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear, was like Mauldin by motivating American participation in the war.

By displaying the Four Freedoms, we get a sense of wanting to protect and embrace them. As American citizens, we are drawn by Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship, since America was built by those two freedoms. As for the other two freedoms, which are Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear, we are motivated by wanting to protect the peace of America and our homes. Although the poster does not have the same story as Mauldin’s book, the poster does deliver a similar message from the book, which is to protect and fight for America’s democracy across the seas. As seen from Mauldin, he writes and draws cartoons about the experiences and hardships of an infantry soldier. With his cartoons, he gives a feeling of understanding to the US soldier, which keeps them sane and keeps the infantries’ moral high, too. As for the poster, the message is to obviously show the ideal freedoms that American citizens wants to protect, but is intended to motivate and push Americans to participate and fight to protect our freedoms, too. Even though the Four Freedoms displayed the ideal Freedoms of America, it failed to show that America was also built by the idea of not participating in foreign affairs. Stated in George Washington’s Farewell Address, he mentioned and forewarned Americans to not interfere in foreign affairs. Unfortunately for America, we break Washington’s promise when Japan brings the fight to US territory,