 It is not unusual to see thrashing , tormenting and caning in Busch 's works . Sharp pencils pierced through models , housewives fall onto kitchen knives , thieves are spiked by umbrellas , tailors cut their tormentors with scissors , rascals are ground in corn mills , drunkards burn , and cats , dogs and monkeys defecate while being tormented . Busch has been frequently called a sadist by educators and psychologists . Tails that are burnt , pulled off , trapped , stretched or eaten is seen by Weissweiler as not aggression against animals , but a phallic allusion to Busch 's undeveloped sexual life . Such graphic text and imagery in cartoon form was not unusual at the time , and publishers , the public or censors found it not particularly noteworthy . Topics and motifs for his early work were derived from 18th- and 19th @-@ century popular literature , the gruesome endings of which he often softened . 
