a barbara cartoon...'the unknown soldier'

The Unknown Soldier is yet another depiction of the myth.  I was thinking of the young men who have died (often needlessly) in war, and how, to use a sporting vernacular, they have 'taken an early bath'.  A bath tub, in a sense, resembles a coffin, and indeed has been a place of death throughout our history, Murat, Morrison etc.  In dying there is also a sense of salvation, and of things being made clean (if, of course, there is an afterlife).  At the same time the cartoon is intended to be simple and eloquent, and as unequivocal as death - the airbrush paint 'splodges' are supposed to represent funeral flowers, blood, and bomb craters all at once.