These essays were supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland's Support for the Individual Artist Scheme and to whom I owe my gratitude. Essays on the Far Side and Callahan will appear in the June issue.

Great Grief!

“All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; The Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away.” [1] 

It’s Monday October 2nd 1950. Readers of the Washington Post and eight other US newspapers find themselves looking at a new four panel cartoon strip called Peanuts by a relatively unknown (outside his locale) cartoonist names Charles Schulz. They see two unnamed kids (Shermy and Patti) sitting on the kerb of a footpath (or sidewalk). There’s a boy approaching them. All the kids have slightly oversized heads. Shermy in the first panel identifies the approaching boy as ‘Charlie Brown’. Charlie Brown (it’s never just Charlie) has a smile on his face and seemingly in a world of his own walks towards the two seated children. Shermy as Charlie Brown walks past in the second panels exclaims: Good Ol’ Charlie Brown…Yes Sir! There’s a more thoughtful: ‘Good Ol’ Charlie Brown… in the third as Charlie Brown moves out of frame. The denouement comes in the fourth panel of course: ‘How I hate him!’. A legend was born.

A legend was born without saying a word. Without doing anything extraordinary. Merely from walking down the street. It’s very possible that (at the time) the religiously inclined Charles Schulz was commenting on the hypocrisy of being nice to someone’s face then stabbing them in the back or the difficulty of being a decent person in a cruel world. Such a low-key birth perhaps echoes the nativity stories of Christ being born in a manger albeit without any supernatural promise of redemption.  At any rate the strip however in handing Charlie Brown such a humble yet vicious birth effectively created his persona for the next 50 years:

Charlie Brown was born to lose. He would never get to kick the ball Lucy Van Pelt held for him, just as he would never pluck up the courage to talk to that Little Red-Haired Girl, just as black-haired, black-hearted Lucy herself would never win Schroeder away from eternal, fanatical practice on his toy piano. (Ibid)

Of course, Peanuts didn’t suddenly appear in a vacuum. The characters didn’t develop their ‘unique’ personalities at once either:

in the beginning all the Peanuts kids were, as Al Capp, the creator of Li’l Abner, observed, “good mean little bastards eager to hurt each other.” What came to be Lucy’s inimitable brand of bullying was suffused throughout the Peanuts population. [2] 

All sorts of forces were instrumental in its origin. First of all, it was driven by the personality of Charles Schulz who thought up, drew and lettered every single Peanuts strip for 50 years. It’s worth giving a brief biographical account of Schulz. Charles M. Schulz (aka ‘Sparky’ because of his baby-like resemblance (according to an uncle) to a cartoon horse) was born in Minneapolis, USA in 1922, the only child of parents of German and Norwegian extraction. If we were to raid national stereotypes in a painfully obvious manner, we might say that this heritage would lead to very hardworking but existential offspring. And to be fair a Protestant work ethic mixed with a creative existential streak was a major part of Schulz’s character. The work ethic came from his father, Carl Schulz who for most of his life owned a barber shop and worked six days a week there as well as being involved in local civic society. Schulz would frequently over the years insert references to his father’s barber shop and trade in Peanuts. He was proud of them even if there was a recognition that perhaps being a barber wasn’t the most glamourous of occupations. There were also periods where money wasn’t always available: ‘When Charlie Brown asks little sister Sally what would happen if their father lost his shop, she says, "We'd probably starve to death."’ [3] Though Sally’s reaction was typically over the top there was a real insecurity that Schulz was looking back upon: the fear of ending up with nothing despite all the work that was put in.

 Schulz, a somewhat shy child was very close to his mother, Dena Halverson who seeing that he loved to draw fully encouraged him in this pursuit. He was a bright boy and though he graduated with good marks especially in art he didn’t go to University but instead concentrate on learning the cartooning ‘craft’ firstly by correspondence or ‘learn-by-mail’ course. His world was shattered in 1943 however on learning that his mother who’d been unwell had developed cancer. His father and family had decided to keep the seriousness of her illness from him and he only learned of it towards the end. At the same time he’d been drafted to the US army. His mother’s last words to him one of his visits home were: ‘Goodbye Sparky. We’ll probably never see each other again’. He would carry her passing and the sudden loneliness that it brought for the rest of his life. On finishing his service he returned to try and continue his pursuit of cartoon strip fame taking a job at Art Instruction the learn-by-mail institution to which he had formerly subscribed whilst getting published in local papers and trying his luck occasionally with the national press. He also though shy had a few relationships including one with Donna Mae Johnson that would serve both as a sense of grief and as an artistic catalyst throughout the fifty years of Peanuts. Schulz asked her to marry him but she chose to marry another perhaps thinking that the life with a wannabe cartoonist wasn’t for her. Schulz took it badly, saying later:

‘A person who not only turns you down, but almost immediately marries the victor. What a bitter blow that is’. [4]

Of course, in a sense for writers and artists rejection is fuel to the fire with Schulz once claiming: ‘I got my money’s worth out of that relationship’ [5] and Donna became the infamous ‘little red-haired girl’.

He created ‘Li’l Folks, first published in the Minneapolis Star in June 1947, which would be a kind of prototype Peanuts. US society at the time was still scared psychologically as well as often actually by its war experience and though still very ‘traditional’ as to the role of women there was to an extent a redefinition of the roles of the sexes. Women although expected to be housewives were nonetheless still a large percentage of a workforce they had joined during the war years. The rise of affordable ‘suburban’ housing and the all pervasiveness of the automobile (which meant couples could be alone much more easily than before hence a rise of pre-marital sex and higher birth rates) combined with consumerism as an aspect of American identity helped to entrench women’s domestic position in Cold War US capitalism whilst opening the door a fraction to the 1960s liberation movements. Though it should be stressed that the ‘benefits’ of consumerism and the ideals of domesticity displayed in advertising at the time only applied to middle-class white women. If you were poor or black you didn’t matter that much.

However, in society and through TV and in the newspapers there was a nervousness on the part of the ‘master-sex’ which Schulz in Li’l Folks would explore. He was also no doubt aware who his audience was as Li’l Folks was placed on the ‘women’s’ pages of the Star so the subversion/inversion of the traditional male-female power structures would have had a more accommodating audience perhaps. Though Schulz eventually wanted them moved to the main body of the paper and was refused. As is noted:

‘One can see Schulz’s cartoon universe taking shape throughout the Li’l Folks run. The gag panels included a genteel child pianist/violinist that loved Beethoven, a goofy little dog, a boy named Charlie Brown (the name of one of Schulz’s fellow teachers at Art Instruction), the theme of unrequited love an ongoing tension between boys and girls, and the conspicuous absence of adults’. [6]

On an August 4th 1947 Li’l Folks cartoon we see a girl about to wallop a boy with a croquet mallet and another boy observes: ‘Well, it looks like our little game is about to come to an end!’ It’s too much to read it as an acknowledgment that the patriarchy’s ‘game’ was over but Schulz often knew which way the wind was blowing and would feature current social issues throughout the span of Peanuts. Perhaps this was a start. 

Eventually Schulz got frustrated with the editorial policy in regard to his cartoon at the Star so he offered an expanded and reformatted four panel version to United Features Syndicate and it was accepted. Thus Peanuts was born. It should be said though that Schulz hated the name ‘Peanuts’. It was an editor that made the decision in regard to the name despite Schulz’s protests. Schulz told TIME in 1965, when the magazine ran a cover story about Charlie Brown’s place in American culture, “I wanted to keep Li’l Folks. I wanted a strip with dignity and significance. ‘Peanuts’ made it sound too insignificant.” [7]

It’s probably difficult to believe now but successful cartoonists in the early-to mid part of the twentieth century were in terms of the arts amongst its best paid practitioners with the most popular and syndicated artists earning in the 1930s over £100,000 a year. The course that Schulz applied to stated that the opening wage for a cartoonist could be £5000. Mesmerising figures for his family that had to consider carefully every penny.

Schulz for example had been fascinated with the likes of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, which ran from 1913 to 1944. It appeared in the New York Evening Journel firstly and became popular if not with the public certainly with intellectuals not least because William Randolph, the paper’s owner was a fan and promoted it heavily. It was a strange tale of unrequited love that a somewhat naive cat has for a violent mouse who treats the cat terribly. Perhaps a comment on society through subverting power-structures it was considered ‘high’art at the time with fans including EE Cummings.

As noted above Schulz brought biographical content and market awareness into that infamous first Peanuts cartoon. Its apparent simplicity masked a very real depth that would serve as the template for the Peanuts world.

"My life is a story of almosts," he told me, managing a wry smile. "I am almost a writer and almost an artist, so I do this for a living." [8]

So is Peanuts literature? Many people would say no citing perhaps various novels or poems as evidence of what is ‘great’ literature. It’s pointless on two fronts arguing what is literature. Firstly, it’s subjective and changes with time as is acknowledged in a Guardian review of Finnegan’s Wake when it was published:

 Mr Joyce's Finnegans Wake, parts of which have been published as "Work in Progress", does not admit of review. In 20 years' time, with sufficient study and with the aid of the commentary that will doubtless arise, one might be ready for an attempt to appraise it. [9]

Interesting wording as Peanuts was essentially a ‘work in progress’ for Schulz for have a century. A story that never stops til the author drops. In an article on Joyce’s Ulysse,s Bloom is: a frustrated nobody. He is Charlie Chaplin’s tramp, Charles Schulz’s Charlie Brown, Seinfeld’s George Costanza. [10] Schulz was certainly aware of Joyce as there’s a late 1940s Li’l Folks cartoon depicting an early version of Schroeder at the piano with the title ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’.  

Also as Garry Trudeau (of Doonesbury fame) recognised Schulz was not adverse to use traditional ‘literary’ devices.:

"Peanuts" was the first (and still the best) postmodern comic strip. Everything about it was different. The drawing was graphically austere but beautifully nuanced. It was populated with complicated, neurotic characters speaking smart, haiku-perfect dialogue. The stories were interwoven with allusions from religion, classical music, psychiatry and philosophy. And such was Schulz's quiet faith in the power of observational truth, he often passed up punch lines in favour of aphorisms and little throwaway codas--literary devices rarely seen in a gag-oriented medium. [11]

Secondly what was categorised as ‘Literature’ by (usually) rich white men said as much about their prejudices as it did about what was great in the literary field: Women and minorities were excluded in an often-nationalistic narrative – Shakespeare was used as a tool of Empire building – created by a wealthy elite. The 1950s would see a challenge to the literary establishment through the rise of the ‘Beats’ (though of course Burroughs and Ginsberg unlike Kerouac were very wealthy). Trudeau considered that Peanuts vibrated with ‘'50s alienation, making it, I always thought, the first Beat strip’. (Ibid) Although he admits that ‘Schulz would say the very notion is preposterous and grandiose’ Trudeau believes Schulz ‘completely revolutionized the art form, deepening it, filling it with possibility, giving permission to all who followed to write from the heart and intellect.’ [12] Peanuts was taken up by both ‘establishment’ and the counter-culture of the day which indicates a depth that facilitates oppositional readings.

Wikipedia for instance states that: ‘Charlie Brown is one of the great American archetypes…’  [13] What someone is trying to do is co-opt the ‘bald-headed kid’ into the ‘never-give up’ and ‘win-against-the-odds’ attitude that America sees itself as having. Or in more strident terms: Charlie Brown as a part of its ‘Manifest Destiny’. Which is probably one of the most ridiculous appropriations ever, even more than Shakespeare as a tool of British imperialism. Which isn’t of course to say Charlie Brown isn’t characteristic of many of us. One of the reasons Peanuts succeeded is that we can have empathy with the struggles of Charlie Brown in life and love. As Chuck Closterman observes: If you can’t empathise with Charlie Brown, you likely lack the ability to empathize with any fictional character.[14]

There was a powerful sparsity in his work that though seemingly minimalist reached into the heart of the matter, gripped it hard and pulled it out. As Yawar observes:

It is incredible that, using a spare few lines and much white space, he should convey so much emotion and deep understanding; beyond imagination that his pacing of space and prose poetry should be so musical. [15]

It could be argued that cartoon strips and in particular Peanuts echoes the great epic poems of antiquity.  Robert Thompson, a scholar of popular culture, called it “arguably the longest story told by a single artist in human history.” [16] One consistent (with variations) set of characters and overlapping and also consistent storylines over a period of 50 years reinforces the similarities as Umberto Eco realises:

Over this basic scheme, there is a steady flow of variations, following a rhythm found in certain primitive epics. (Primitive, too, is the habit of referring to the protagonist always by his full name—even his mother addresses Charlie Brown in that fashion, like an epic hero.) Thus you could never grasp the poetic power of Schulz’s work by reading only one or two or ten episodes: you must thoroughly understand the characters and the situations, for the grace, tenderness, and laughter are born only from the infinitely shifting repetition of the patterns, and from fidelity to the fundamental inspirations. They demand from the reader a continuous act of empathy, a participation in the inner warmth that pervades the events. [17]

We are often the authors of our own monsters and sadly too many times the origin of other’s monsters. Eco describes this very beautifully in relation to Peanuts:

The poetry of these children arises from the fact that we find in them all the problems, all the sufferings of the adults, who remain offstage. These children affect us because in a certain sense they are monsters: they are the monstrous infantile reductions of all the neuroses of a modern citizen of industrial civilization.

They affect us because we realize that if they are monsters it is because we, the adults, have made them so. In them we find everything: Freud, mass culture, digest culture, frustrated struggle for success, craving for affection, loneliness, passive acquiescence, and neurotic protest. But all these elements do not blossom directly, as we know them, from the mouths of a group of children: they are conceived and spoken after passing through the filter of innocence. Schulz’s children are not a sly instrument to handle our adult problems: they experience these problems according to a childish psychology, and for this very reason they seem to us touching and hopeless, as if we were suddenly aware that our ills have polluted everything, at the root. [18]

If we read Peanuts as adults as merely nostalgic entertainment, then standing in plain sight is as Eco realises must be the uncomfortable feeling that this series of strips is full of the extremities of loneliness and grief albeit articulated using a beautifully sparse and poetic but starkly unforgiving methodology.   

Of course, Peanuts is literature but as Linus observes “Five hundred years from now who’ll know the difference?” So instead of engaging in an endless wrangling on what is or isn’t literature let’s explore the world and characters that Schulz created and perhaps build a better picture.

“I wasn’t actually hated.” Schulz reminisces. “Nobody cared that much”

Indifference and outright cruelty is a stable of the Peanuts world. It was the oil that made it run albeit often wrapped up in philosophical musing and brilliant jokes. Matt Groening, originator of The Simpsons was ‘excited by the casual cruelty and off-hand humiliations at the heart of the strip. [19] Forget the cuddly toys and overwhelming marketing that accompanied the strip. Of course, there’s only indifference where some sort of belief exists. Happiness is a Warm Puppy? Maybe. But what if that puppy is possibly the most self-centred canine in existence who doesn’t even appear to know the name of his owner?  

At the centre of this world is one Charlie Browne, a bald-headed slightly overweight little boy. Is he the hero? If knowing you’ll never be anything more than you already are and still keep going then he is. If year after year you despite all the evidence to the contrary you think this time you’ll kick the football then it’s marginal as Mr. Trump would say. Charlie Brown is not the most out-going character in the Peanuts Universe – that would probably be Snoopy who evolved from (vaguely) loyal dog to WW1 fight pilot/flaming narcissist – but he is as Closterman releases the ‘emotional vortex’ at the heart of the strip: an ‘unironic loser with a limitless heart who is endlessly hammered for caring too much’. [20] All he wants is to be liked, not even loved, but liked and maybe have a bit of good luck now and again that everyone needs to keep them going; a bit of reassurance that the universe cares.

Schulz doesn’t even give him that. An excellent example is the strip of September 25th 1960 in which Charlie Brown says to Lucy that ‘all it would take to make me happy is have someone say he likes me’. Lucy incredulously asks if this is true and when the affirmative comes back she says ‘I can’t do it’ and walks away. This as Closterman points out is meant to be the ‘joke’ [21] but it isn’t a joke or a punchline. It’s merely the affirmation that sometimes things don’t get better. This was heretical to the American Dream of the 1950s/60s ad infinitum and indeed even today to the ‘inspirational’ online/social media culture that tells us that we can achieve anything if we merely believe in ourselves. However Radke observes:

Peanuts also demonstrates the optimism of the [existentialist] philosophy. Why does Charlie Brown continue to go out to the pitcher’s mound, despite his 50 year losing streak? Why try to kick the football, when Lucy has always pulled it away at the last second? Because there is an infinite gap between the past and the present. Regardless of what has come before, there is always the possibility of change. Monstrous freedom is a double-edged sword. We exist and are responsible. This is both liberating and terrifying. [22]

Freedom is terrifying. It puts the emphasis and responsibility firmly on us. In a sense we are forced to ‘stand out’ whilst many of us we secretly want to be ‘average’. Not to stand out or be different. The problem is that we want to be averagely beautiful or averagely rich or averagely clever. To not stand out in a crowd that itself stands out.  We want to be liked and insulated by others against as many of life’s cold winds as possible. Charlie Brown genuinely wants to be average. He realises that to be clever, rich or beautiful is out of reach. He realises this of course whilst still a child. Most people have to wait till they’re adults. If they ever do:

‘Charlie Brown represents the downside of adult consciousness. And what does Lucy represent? Lucy represents the world itself. Lucy responds the way society always responds to any sudden insight of existential despair: How did you not know this already?’ [23]

Of course, the great thing about Charlie Brown is that he doesn’t give up. He keeps trying despite his lack of social and sporting skills. If he represents anything it’s perhaps this. It takes a remarkable courage to simply keep going, to stay in the trenches so to speak. Schulz himself was a soldier during WW2. He served as a staff sergeant with the US 20th Armoured Division in Europe during World War II, as a squad leader on a machine gun crew so perhaps the metaphor is apt. It’s noticeable Schulz places Spike (Snoopy’s rather hopeless brother) in the trenches and sends Snoopy over to Bill Maudlin’s for a beer every Veterans Day. Bill Maudlin, though less known now, created two of the best-known American cartoon characters ever, in Willie and Joe, two ‘grunts’ that represented the average American G. I. His cartoons showed the dark side of war and were tolerated by the authorities because they helped to temper expectations in regard to the war being ‘easy’ to win and because they served as an outlet in which ordinary soldiers’ frustrations could be mirrored. In war it’s as important to mind your own side’s behaviour as it is the enemy’s sometimes. However General Patton considered Maudlin an ‘unpatriotic anarchist’ after the cartoonist mocked him though Maudlin was predictably more (sort of) nuanced:

“Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn’t like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes. You wait around in a foxhole and you’re going to get killed.” [24]

Maudlin like Schulz specialised in a humour that isn’t particularly funny. There’s a cartoon from January 15th 1944 that sums this up. We see Willie and Joe digging a road and a jeep roars by covering them in mud. We hear a voice from the jeep: ‘Damn fine road, men!” This panel seems to articulate and indeed amplify the space between the ideal and the reality, between those in office and those on the ground. In fact, Maudlin didn’t like the reaction to his cartoons that often occurred:

“War humor is very bitter, very sardonic,” Mauldin says. “It’s not ha-ha humor. I asked Tad Foster, a cartoonist I admired a lot from the Vietnam War, if people came up to him and said, ‘I loved your stuff from the war—it kept me laughing all the time.’ Foster said, ‘Yup, the sons of bitches.’ I feel the same way. When someone says Willie and Joe made them laugh, I get pissed off every time. I tell them, ‘You’re not supposed to laugh.’ Maybe you grin or nod, but it’s not ha-ha humor.” [25]

Schulz in person much gentler than Maudlin was taken aback that his work made people laugh. He said it never occurred to him. (only When Necessary: The Art of Peanuts) It's significant that Maudlin originally wanted to have Willie and Joe killed on the last day of the War. There was to be no happy ending for his creations. However, his editor refused to print the strip and Maudlin backed down. Eventually he just gave up on them. Their happy ending was that they survived and faded into obscurity. As Trudeau recognises it’s very probable that the majority of Schulz’s readership would have no idea who Bill Maudlin was, but Schulz felt it important that they should. [26] Schulz finally met Maudlin at a comics convention. When Mauldin asked him the reason for all the Veteran’s Day salutes, Schulz told him that admired his work as a young GI in World War II. Mauldin smiled and said, “That’s all you had to say.”  [27]

Though it’s possibly too far to say that Willie and Joe are direct influences on Charlie Brown there are certainly echoes of them in Charlie Brown’s determination to make the best of the circumstances he finds himself in and importantly to keep going. Charlie Brown has been described as the model neurotic being prone not only to depression and anxiety but also paralysing fits of over-analysis. [28] In one instance he develops a psychosomatic rash that induces hallucinations to the effect that his head looks (even more) like a baseball. He goes to camp as treatment and to avoid shame he places a paper bag over his head. Amazingly he becomes in effect a different person, a font of wisdom and truth and gets elected camp president. Of course, once he removes the bag he returns to his normal unpopularity.

“I’d give anything in the world if that little girl with the red hair would come over, and sit with me,”

His ‘love’ life is in general a disaster though this is in keeping with the entire Peanuts world which as we shall see is either entirely unrequited or is pretty disastrous. He longs to talk to the ‘little red-haired girl’ but is too shy and awkward to ever talk to her and thus messes up every opportunity to do so. The little-red haired girl was first mentioned in 1961 though she was never actually seen in person in the comic strip. There is a 1950 drawing that Schulz gave Donna Mae Johnson which is the only depiction of the little red-haired girl. It shows a sadly hopeful little boy ready to give a bunch of flowers to a fierce looking and obviously unimpressed little girl. Though she is never depicted in the comic strips (except as a silhouette in a May 1998 strip in which Snoopy dances with her before Charlie Brown gets the chance to) a few rather unimaginative television and film directors choose to portray her on TV and in the movies. It was a deliberate choice by Schulz who admitted in 1997, "I could never draw her to satisfy the readers' impression of what she's probably like." [29] Also just as if Schulz allowed Charlie Brown to kick the football to portray her would seem a betrayal of all those years of hopeless longing and never ending anxiety mixed with a never-ending belief that kept Charlie Brown going. Schulz thankfully resisted the temptation on both counts:

Like Godot, she is permanently offstage in the absurd drama of Peanuts, forever lingering on the sidelines of Charlie Brown’s long, dark lunchtime of the soul. We don’t lay our eyes on her, even as he can’t take his off her. [30]

Radke suggests that Charlie Brown was an existentialist. Schulz only was aware of Satre from the newspapers: “I read about him in the New York Times, where he said it was very difficult to be a human being, and the only way to fight against it is to lead an active life – that’s very true.” [31]

Charlie Brown is the epitome of ‘an active life’. Despite everything he feeds his (indifferent/demanding) dog, manages the (ungrateful) baseball team, albeit very badly and continues to secretly pine after the little red-haired girl which is still an activity even if not a healthy one. Redke asks:

Why does Charlie Brown tear himself into knots over the little red-haired girl? The very possibility that he could go over and talk to her is far more distressing than its impossibility would be; he must take ownership of his failure. When she is the victim of a bully in the school yard, Charlie Brown’s despair threatens to leap right off the comic page. He isn’t suffering because he can’t help her, but because he could help her, but won’t: “Why can’t I rush over there and save her? Because I’d get slaughtered, that’s why...” When Linus helps her out instead, thereby illustrating his freedom of action, Charlie Brown only becomes more melancholic… [32]

Love after all has in a sense very little to do with the person being loved. It’s all about the psyche of the self and how a person loses themselves in an interior world filled with an emotional maelstrom. We’re not even sure if the little red-haired girl new Charlie Brown existed. There is a parallel in the ‘real-life story’ of Schulz and Donna Mae Johnson, as we have seen, the inspiration behind the red-haired girl.  It was eleven years after her rejection of Schulz that the little red-haired girl first appeared (or rather appeared ‘off-screen’) and she recognised her-self straight away:

Donna read Peanuts every day—she still does—and guessed that the unnamed redhead was inspired by her “right off the bat.” She also started picking up on what appeared to be meaningful references and tiny in-jokes. Back in 1950, when Sparky used to pick Donna up in his father’s car, she would climb in and lock the driver’s-seat door, playfully shutting Sparky out; in the June 13, 1971, Sunday strip, Charlie Brown describes exactly that scenario as his idea of what love must be. “It was just like reading an old love letter,” Donna has said. [33]

She and Schulz would stay in touch and he finally did tell her that she was the little red-haired girl’s inspiration. It’s not unusual for writers to pen a ‘love-letter’ to their old (or never-were) flames but for such a consistency of approach over thirty years to an unrequited love, Charlie Brown’s (un)adventure with ‘the little red-haired girl’ Schulz is unmatched.

"Peppermint Patty, the tomboy, is forthright, doggedly loyal, with a devastating singleness of purpose, the part of us that goes through life with blinders on." [34]

Of course, as is often the way, Charlie Brown’s hopeless pursuit of the little-red haired girl (and his hopeless social skills) meant that he was completely unaware of any girls that actually liked him, the most prominent of which was one Patricia Reichardt, better known as Peppermint Patty. Schulz tried to incorporate changing social attitudes into the strip and Patty was created as a recognition of the Women’s Liberation Movements of the 1960s. At a time when girls weren’t encouraged to play sport Patty excelled at it often better than the male characters. All the other girls in the strip wear dresses but Patty refuses to. There is a strip in the early 1970s in which the school tries to make her and she rebels. Unfortunately, Patty is not the brightest of characters and believes only what she wants to believe which ends up with her hiring Snoopy as a lawyer against the school. Though Patty had a crush on Charlie Brown she has been taken up by the gay community as an icon mainly because of how she challenged the gender norms of the era, how she dressed (in a ‘tom-boy’ manner) and her relationship with her best-friend Marcie, who calls her ‘Sir’.

The thing that made Charlie Brown popular is that in our late night 2am sleepless nights we’re closer to being Charlie Brown than we’re are to who we want to be. It takes a lot to admit this:

“I aspired to Linus-ness; to be wise and kind and highly skilled at making gigantic structures out of playing cards,” the children’s-book author Mo Willems notes in one of the essays in the Fantagraphics series. But, he continues, “I knew, deep down, that I was Charlie Brown. I suspect we all did.”  [35]

Though there are a lot of worst people to be than Charlie Brown who is a decent kid even if, we, like him, realise that we seem often to be the butt of some great cosmic joke. But we keep on keeping on. Charlie Brown ‘developed what the actor Alec Baldwin, in one of the Fantagraphics introductions, calls a kind of “trudging, Jimmy Stewart–like decency and predictability.” The Charlie Brown way was to keep on keeping on, standing with a tangled kite or a losing baseball team day after day’. [36] It’s only the very lucky or the very ruthless that can change the world despite what the inspirational messaging or the political manifestos tell you – even if it is getting harder to tell the two apart. Most of us kept on keeping on, back in the day when bombs were going off down the street and now when somehow the world seems to be turning in on itself again. It’s important that this isn’t taken as nihilism or indifference. Charlie Brown is passionate about his ever-failing baseball team and the inability to fly a kite cuts him to the quick. Rather keep on keeping on in this instance is trying to be decent despite all your frustrations and the barriers put in your path. There’s a lesson for our times in there somewhere.

You got a used dog Charlie Brown

There are probably a million stories about a little boy and his dog. There is probably just one in which the dog can’t be bothered to learn his owner’s name: ‘that round-headed kid’ is about the best he can do, despite the fact that it is the ‘round-headed kid’ that feeds him and has to put up with his various whims. In fact Charlie Brown was not Snoopy’s original owner. That distinction goes to a little girl called Lila who we discover in a 1968 strip bought Snoopy from the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm but her parents lived in a flat so couldn’t keep him. She only appears once in the strip when Snoopy rushes to her bedside when she’s ill but the impression is that she has a place in his heart that Charlie Brown will never have.  

Snoopy has been described as an exemplar of narcissism and as a reason why the latter twentieth century strips aren’t as ‘good’ [37] though whilst agreeing with the narcissism accusation there was perhaps an overuse of Peppermint Patty in the later years rather than Snoopy. It’s true there is a type of schizophrenic element to Snoopy. As noted, he is there every evening demanding his supper and often wakes Charlie Brown during the night for cookies but for most the time, he is either another personality or is in (literally) another time-zone – that is, the period from 1914 – 18. For some reason this dog’s favourite daydream is to take part in one of the most vicious wars in human history. It’s fair to say that there aren’t many dogs that daydream of the glory of war. Too many humans perhaps, but not many dogs. It would also be fair enough to say that there must be some vast psychic reservoir of pain that is the driving force behind this. Certainly, something more than narcissism.  

There’s a strip in which Lucy (outdoing her usual cruelty) snaps at Snoopy that ‘you’re a dog! A dog is all you’ll ever be!’ which of course was probably the worst thing she could’ve said. He thought he was much more than a just ‘a dog’. He was based on Schulz’s dog ‘Spike’ who was (as is often apparent to everyone except their owners) somewhat of a belligerent beast who would eat just about anything. In fact, Spike was the reason behind Schulz’s first major published cartoon when he sent a drawing of the ‘nail eating dog’ to Ripley’s ‘Believe it or Not’. In the beginning Snoopy was pretty much an ordinary dog who’s main conceit was that he could hear candy being eaten from miles away. It wasn’t til 1952 that Schulz allows us to see what Snoopy is thinking. Typically the first thing we hear him think (not speak) is a complaint about the indignity of being the butt of one of Charlie Brown’s jokes. At that point Charlie Brown’s character was still in development and he would say and do some quite cruel things.  

By the mid-1960s Snoopy’s character had gone to the extremes of imagination so much so that by 1965 we first see him on top of his dog-house pretending it is a Sopworth Camel and that he is a WW1 flying ace preparing for battle with the infamous Red Baron.  This caused some consternation:

‘The Flying Ace persona prompted Mort Walker, creator of the military-themed comic strip Beetle Bailey, to ask: ‘What does a dog know about World War I and the Red Baron? Where did he get the helmet?’ And of the bullet-riddled doghouse, Walker declared: ‘Good golly, this has gone beyond the tale.’ [38]

Much as a story or poem seems to sum up (at least for us non-combatants) the horror, alienation and even downright boredom of war Schulz manages this in a few panels and a few words by placing Snoopy in the middle of ‘enemy territory’ after he is shot down behind enemy lines. Tipton describes the scene very well:

‘…the dog imagines himself in fierce aerial combat, ending with a crash behind enemy lines, punctuated by staccato artillery. After crashing, Snoopy traverses the ruined French countryside, the whole scene silhouetted against an apocalyptic sky. As Snoopy wiggles through trenches and passes signs for Châlons-sur-Marne, Pont-à-Mousson and the River Moselle, informed viewers can deduce that he is in a region of heavy fighting between French and German troops. A bleak soundscape of sirens, machine guns and a spectral chromatic flute motif accompanies his trek.’ [39]

Schulz very cleverly brought the horror (and often ridiculousness) of war to a suburban neighbourhood full of children playing and to a public that considered Peanuts a children’s cartoon. By placing the war in the mind of a dog and having Snoopy as the main protagonist (though typically we do see Spike, Snoopy’s somewhat down-at-heel brother as a ‘blighter’ in the trenches) he brought it to the attention of a new generation who didn’t have the direct experience of conflict that their parents had but may have nonetheless still had experience of its consequences. We can see in Snoopy’s war adventuring glimpses of Schulz’s real experiences in WW2. Bombed out countryside and sudden glimpses of reality: ‘It really is a long way to Tipperary!’

We’re all the heroes (and too often the villains) of our own stories as the saying goes. Snoopy even more so. Perhaps it is because he really is lonely. Schulz did give him a family though he later admitted that this was a mistake as it somewhat diminished him and with the exception of Spike (who is very lonely and lives in the desert) they rarely made an appearance after that.

The real sadness of Snoopy is of course he’s as Lucy bluntly tells him just a dog and in his more lucid moments realises his dependence on the round-headed kid. It is a dark and stormy night of the soul to realise you’re a few empty supper dishes away from starvation.

No one Loves Lucy.

As has been indicated longing and its twin unrequitedness runs through the Peanuts world and no character is immune, even Lucy who at first glance seems the strongest and most self-sufficient. Lucy is probably best known for her bullying and cruelty, for example her eternal pulling of the ball away from Charlie Brown just after she’s persuaded him to kick it again. She wasn’t the first to do this to him, but Schulz managed to drag this cruelty out for years. Charlie Brown as a hopeless Sisyphus type forever condemned to miss the ball but to try and try again. Lucy also acts as an amateur shrink but not in a particularly positive manner. ‘Get over it’ is her essential message to her main patient, Charlie Brown.

However Lucy has one weakness: her (unrequited) devotion to the Beethoven obsessed piano playing Schroeder who at best considers her a nuisance though noticeably is upset when she temporarily moves away. It is interesting that Schulz gives perhaps the most high-brow of the Peanuts characters a line from ‘My Fair Lady’: ‘Don’t tell Me I’ve Grown Accustomed to That Face’. Like Higgins with Eliza, Schroeder has taken Lucy’s presence on his piano for granted and the horror of loneliness hits him when she leaves, even if only for a short time.   Schulz always seemed to give the characters an Achille’s heel and Schroeder is most definitely Lucy’s whilst she ties this would be ‘serious musician’ to the reality of existence. However, Schroeder’s selfishness soon reappears on her return:

By casting Schroeder in the role of Higgins, Schulz offers the same cutting critique. Schroeder took Lucy for granted and felt his intellect could absolve him of emotional attachment and wrongdoing. It didn’t, but even after experiencing heartbreak, Schroeder learned nothing. When Lucy moved back home at the end of the storyline, she resumed her place at the foot of his piano. Schroeder didn’t even acknowledge her until, once again, she intruded on his space. [40]

There are as in life brief flashes of compassion which keep people hanging on though of course Schulz manages to ruin even these for his characters. In a 1984 strip Schroeder is so pleased that Lucy remembers Beethoven’s birthday that he kisses her on the cheek. Unfortunately, Lucy thinks it’s Snoopy that kissed her and is appalled. Even the briefest joy doesn’t last in the Peanuts world.

Schulz hated shallowness of any kind whether it be of a political or religious bent which is why happy ending are rare, preaching the obvious is kept to a minimum in the strip and why often even staples of Christian belief are sometimes subverted and the security that politics and religion offer is often absent except rather touchingly in a child’s blanket. Linus is metaphorically (and sometimes literally) attached to his ‘security’ blanket and we see the ‘cold turkey’ of the addict when Lucy takes it away from him and hides it.  Take his comfort away and he can’t function. Perhaps Schulz was making a point in regard to contemporary philosophies though as ever if he was it is of course completely understated.

So there we (kind of) have it. Though with Peanuts you never really get the picture completely. There’s too much depth. But we see a kind hearted, determined but limited little boy and his dog that imagines himself in a horrifying conflict, at the centre of a group of little kids imbued with all the neurosis of contemporary adult life in a world than spanned fifty years. I say it’s literature and a damn fine example, many will say it isn’t but as Schulz points out in a few hundred years who’ll know the difference?

[1] https://damienlove.com/writing/the-great-pumpkin-never-comes-charles-schulz-peanuts/

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/the-exemplary-narcissism-of-snoopy/407827/

[3] https://www.newsweek.com/dark-side-charles-schulz-103889

[4] Jake Tapper, The Complete Peanuts 1992 – 94. Fantagraphics, 1992 introduction

[5] Ibid

[6] Gary Growth, Introduction, The Complete Peanuts, Fantagraphics, 1998 – 2000.

[7] http://time.com/4056694/charles-schulz-peanuts-anniversary/

[8] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/opinion/07iht-edjohnson.1.8229024.html

[9] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/aug/17/fromthearchives.jamesjoyce

[10] https://medium.com/@pirangy/ulysses-by-james-joyce-i-john-truby-the-anatomy-of-story-p-202-204-ed694a78560f

[11] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-12/16/022r-121699-idx.html??noredirect=on

[12] Ibid

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown

[14] Peanuts Every Sunday, 1950s Vol 1. Fantagraphics.

[15] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)00338-4/fulltext

[16] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/the-exemplary-narcissism-of-snoopy/407827/

[17] http://www.openculture.com/2016/02/umberto-eco-explains-the-poetic-power-of-charles-schulzs-peanuts.html

[18] Ibid

[19]  Introduction, The Complete Peanuts 1955-1956

[20] Introduction, Peanuts Every Sunday 1950s Vol 1.

[21] Ibid

[22] https://philosophynow.org/issues/44/Sartre_and_Peanuts

[23] Ibid

[24] http://www.historynet.com/bill-willie-joe.htm

[25] Ibid

[26] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-12/16/022r-121699-idx.html??noredirect=on 

[27] https://bigdesignevents.com/2012/11/12/veterans-day-tribute-missing-from-charlie-brown/

[28] https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/and-all-jazz/201003/the-charlie-brown-theory-personality

[29] https://peanuts.fandom.com/wiki/Little_Red-Haired_Girl)

[30] https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/peanuts-real-little-red-haired-girl

[31] https://philosophynow.org/issues/44/Sartre_and_Peanuts

[32] Ibid

[33] https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/11/peanuts-real-little-red-haired-girl

[34] Peanuts, Vol 7.

[35] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/the-exemplary-narcissism-of-snoopy/407827/

[36] Ibid

[37] Ibid

[38] https://www.historytoday.com/carrie-allen-tipton/snoopy-remembers-great-war

[39] Ibid

[40] https://kotaku.com/how-peanuts-used-lucy-and-schroeder-to-explore-dysfunct-1825694862