Journal+5+-+Peter+Lee

COMIC

Intrepretation of Let Us Prey

The analogy is that Nast is comparing the political machines and especially political bosses, with vultures that swoop down and eat their prey. They are manipulative, and in Western society, vultures have always had a negative connotation, and have always been a symbol of evil. Nast compares the political bosses to workers because they The label - A group of vultures waiting for the storm to blow over - is an allusion to how the political bosses didn't do much, but got their revenue in the form of graft and bribery. This is always how vultures usually get their food - they wait for an animal to kill another animal, and swoop down to eat the animal that was just killed.

The vultures are very fat, which shows how greedy they are. On the corpse Tweed is down on, it says New York. The fact that he is basically sitting and trampling New York shows how he has put New York into submission, and that he totally rules New York. Also, the fact that the treasury is a bone, means up that they have completely left New York barren, and have scavenged, as vultures do, the money, and simply the whole of New York.