Death by Situational Irony

This political cartoon creatively uses a variety of visual rhetoric to show the irony behind Muammar Gaddafi's capture and death.  Gaddafi referred to those who opposed him as rats and threatened to kill those who opposed him.  The artist's choice of caricature and setting show Gaddafi as a rat caught in a trap, much like the way Gaddafi described and threatened his opponents.  The caricature of Gaddafi includes a rat with curly human hair covering its body.  The rat is a fusion of a rat's body and an elongated representation of Gaddafi's face with rat whiskers to further the resemblance to a rat.  The choice of caricature shows Gaddafi as dirty and dehumanizes him.  The trap itself is a substitution representing the rebel militia and National Transitional Council who captured and killed Gaddafi.  This reverses the roles prescribed by Gaddafi when he called his opponents rats: Gaddafi is the dead rat and his opponents are the trap that killed him.
    Other objects in the cartoon further allude to his capture and depict Gaddafi as a rat.  Gaddafi was captured by a rebel militia after he had taken refuge with several of his bodyguards in a drain underneath the road.  Through cartoons and popular imagery, we associate rats with crescent-shaped holes where a wall meets a floor.  To tailor to Gaddafi's unique situation, the artist made the hole that the rat in the cartoon came out of is circular like a manhole.  The wall in the cartoon is made of stone or concrete, alluding to the composition of the road that Gaddafi hid under.  The iconic signs of the golden gun and the Gaddafi hat make it clear that the rat in the trap is a caricature of Muammar Gaddafi.  The reality of the situational irony is made more apparent and is easier understood after viewing this artist's depiction of Gaddafi's death.