I am going to be totally honest with you and admit that I think that Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts, should be regarded every bit as highly as any other creative genius that you could name.
Forget the never-ending line of Snoopy merchandise for a moment (and I like Snoopy, don't get me wrong). But go back and read the comic strips, especially the firts twenty years, and in it you will find that Peanuts is right up there with Fyodor Dostoevsky in exploring the bleakness of the human condition. Without doubt, the very first strip set the tone that was to follow (as usual, click to enlarge):
Although Schulz softened somewhat in the latter period of Peanuts, certain elements remained constant. The most obvious of these lay in the fortunes of Good ol' Charlie Brown. Again, of all literary characters, Charlie Brown may well be my favourite. Think Yossarian, only through a Russian existentialist lens.
Perhaps the one constant in Charlie Brown's life is pain. His most appealing characteristics are either a self-defeating stubbornness, or determined persistence to try his best even through he knows that he will never triumph. Thus, he will never win a game, but continues playing baseball (actually, that's not quite true, as they did win a game once, but were stripped after Rerun, Lucy and Linus's little brother, was proven to have bet on the result). Similarly, he can never fly that kite, but he is always out there trying.
The starkest example of this futility can be found in the ongoing battle with Lucy around kicking the football. Every football season, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown to kick, and every year she pulls it away as he follows through. Generally, the result was Charlie flying through the air and landing painfully on his back. The strip that I have chosen to focus on today is one of my all time favourites, and features Lucy, the football and Shulz's tendency to drift into biblical reference.
Peanuts being Peanuts though, we are talking Old Testament fatalism rather than New Testament hope. Remember, Charlie Brown's greatest strength is that he is a positive fellow. He expects that Lucy will pull the ball away - as she always does - but he always attempts to convince himself that for whatever reason, this one time will be the time that Lucy choses to hold the ball and allow him to make the kick.
Yet in this strip, as the look on his face illustrates clearly, he is under no illusion about the ultimate futility of his task. Yet still he does it. Like Isaiah, he can rage against it all he wants, but the outcome is already decided. Lucy, in a manner that only she can deliver, evokes a vision of blight and destruction (as the Old Testament does so very, very well). This is Peanuts in the moment. Happy days it is not.
But these are the moments where I truly love Charlie Brown. Aware of the futility, but driven nonetheless by endless determination and hope, he is the every-man that the world needs to know is out there.
Forget the never-ending line of Snoopy merchandise for a moment (and I like Snoopy, don't get me wrong). But go back and read the comic strips, especially the firts twenty years, and in it you will find that Peanuts is right up there with Fyodor Dostoevsky in exploring the bleakness of the human condition. Without doubt, the very first strip set the tone that was to follow (as usual, click to enlarge):
Although Schulz softened somewhat in the latter period of Peanuts, certain elements remained constant. The most obvious of these lay in the fortunes of Good ol' Charlie Brown. Again, of all literary characters, Charlie Brown may well be my favourite. Think Yossarian, only through a Russian existentialist lens.
Perhaps the one constant in Charlie Brown's life is pain. His most appealing characteristics are either a self-defeating stubbornness, or determined persistence to try his best even through he knows that he will never triumph. Thus, he will never win a game, but continues playing baseball (actually, that's not quite true, as they did win a game once, but were stripped after Rerun, Lucy and Linus's little brother, was proven to have bet on the result). Similarly, he can never fly that kite, but he is always out there trying.
The starkest example of this futility can be found in the ongoing battle with Lucy around kicking the football. Every football season, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown to kick, and every year she pulls it away as he follows through. Generally, the result was Charlie flying through the air and landing painfully on his back. The strip that I have chosen to focus on today is one of my all time favourites, and features Lucy, the football and Shulz's tendency to drift into biblical reference.
Peanuts being Peanuts though, we are talking Old Testament fatalism rather than New Testament hope. Remember, Charlie Brown's greatest strength is that he is a positive fellow. He expects that Lucy will pull the ball away - as she always does - but he always attempts to convince himself that for whatever reason, this one time will be the time that Lucy choses to hold the ball and allow him to make the kick.
Yet in this strip, as the look on his face illustrates clearly, he is under no illusion about the ultimate futility of his task. Yet still he does it. Like Isaiah, he can rage against it all he wants, but the outcome is already decided. Lucy, in a manner that only she can deliver, evokes a vision of blight and destruction (as the Old Testament does so very, very well). This is Peanuts in the moment. Happy days it is not.
But these are the moments where I truly love Charlie Brown. Aware of the futility, but driven nonetheless by endless determination and hope, he is the every-man that the world needs to know is out there.
Comments
There's a Snoopy quote for virtually every occasion. Recently my parents, animal and trivia lovers that they are, sent me an article about how intelligent pigs are.
Once Lucy was patronising Snoopy about pigs being the most intelligent domestic animals, blah blah ad nauseam, to which Snoopy laconically riposted: "If they're so smart, then why are they pigs?"
Touche.