When you think about all the strips over the years involving Charlie Brown, it's not a pretty picture. Even the official Party Line on the official website www.snoopy.com has to lie to prevent Charlie Brown's life from sounding hopeless. Here's the World Famous Marketing Expert, polishing up a profile of their legendary global product Charlie Brown, so his bleak life won't make you want to blow your own head off:
'Charlie Brown wins your heart with his losing ways. It always rains on his parade, his baseball game, and his life. He's an inveterate worrier who frets over trifles (but who's to say they're trifles?). Although he is concerned with the true meaning of life, his friends sometimes call him "blockhead." Other than his knack for putting himself down, there are few sharp edges of wit in his repertoire; usually he's the butt of the joke, not the joker. He can be spotted a mile away in his sweater with the zig zag trim, head down, hands in pocket, headed for Lucy's psychiatric booth. He is considerate, friendly and polite and we love him knowing that he'll never win a baseball game or the heart of the little red-haired girl, kick the football Lucy is holding or fly a kite successfully. His friends call him "wishy-washy," but his spirit will never give up in his quest to triumph over adversity.'
Charlie Brown has a spirit?? Charlie Brown is on a quest??
Just because Chuck manages to plod forward despite everything that his torturing deity Schulz throws in his way, that doesn't mean he's on a "quest."
Now Linus on the other hand, Linus is a young man on a quest. You could even go so far as to call Linus "quixotic" (if you knew how to pronounce that word) in his quest to be visited by The Great Pumpkin, to be born again in the fire of The Great Pumpkin, and to convert all friends and strangers to his heathen Pumpkinist way. (Except for Christmas time, when Linus casts off his worship of The Great Pumpkin just long enough to sincerely recite the X-Mas Pageant solliloquy, and then he's back to thumping on The Great Pumpkin.)
Just because Charlie Brown hasn't jumped from a great height (maybe the kite-eating tree?) or SUCCEEDED in staying out in the rain until he caught pneumonia and died, does not mean that he has a "quest to triumph over adversity." I honestly think the person writing this Very Oaficial profile started describing the "lovable loser" in all his glory, and either realized that it was sounding too bleak, or else was told to make it more upbeat by a supervisor or focus group. Strips featuring Charlie Brown don't end with hope. He never says, "I'll get them next time!" in the last panel, or "We'll beat Peppermint Patty's team next time!" It always ends with "Rats!" or "Good grief!" or just takes all the lines that could have been used to show more hair, and crowds them on his gnarled brow, his clenched-shut eyes, the squiggly mouth with corners turned down.
The others aren't quite so hopeless, but there are a lot of persistent failures among the cast of Peanuts. Lucy has been hounding Schroeder for at least forty years, even though he swears he'll never marry her unless she's the last girl on earth (and only then if there are no dogs, birds or animals left on earth to spend his time with). Linus sits in the pumpkin patch all night every year, waiting for The Great Pumpkin, who never comes. Even Snoopy persistently fails in his fantasy dogfights against the Red Baron.
Unlike Hoff, I'm not going to tell you that the failures and hopelessness in the lives of a bunch of line-drawings PROVE how life will work out for you. The only thing Peanuts demonstrates is how Schulz the cruel deity made his subjects dance.
BACKWARD or ONWARD 