How The American Icons In David Griffith's The Surrender

Griffith’s painting, The Surrender, was beautiful visually, but it seemed to have an ugly, underlying meaning to it. There were, quite obviously, two opposing sides. One consisted of American icons, the heroes, and the other side consisted of what was thought to be the rest of the world, the villains. Though these icons may be heroes to this generation, on the right are where the “evil” people, such as the praying muslims, sit. Though this is what the painting depicted, the world is not as black and white.

On the left side of the painting, held the heroic peoples. They stood, ready to battle, the American flag proudly sailed through the wind. The attitude of those who stood there, specifically Waldo, showed how they thought they were better than the others on the conflicting team. The tone of this group was vicious whereas, the tone of the group on the right was lost.
It appeared as though the American side had already beaten them and was going to continue to do so until they were willing to surrender, so, that they did. The white flag seemed to hang in the air as a symbol. A symbol that proved the Americans correct. They were better than them. The Islamic people couldn’t defeat such a wonderful country with such powerful figures, what with their “terroristic” ways.

Robert Griffith created the image to portray his feelings on the world, separating those that he thought to be good, the Americans, and those that were thought to be bad, everyone else. The message read: “The only way is the American way and everyone else is bad.” So, when there was evil in the world, the Americans had to indulge in battle and they planned to punish those who they fought. Both the darkened, murky sky and the thick smoke in the background indicated that something terrible was going to