This is one of those posts that I have been meaning to write for a long time, a long time meaning ever since I started this blog or maybe even before then.
The Peanuts comic strip and characters have meant a lot to me since I was a kid. My relationship with Peanuts is mostly happiness, but with a little bit of agony.
Happiness is when mom turns on Blues Clues for your younger siblings and one of the first ads that plays is for the Peanuts home video collection..agony is when it’s over two minutes later. Watching Blues Clues might be fun for the younger ones but you know what you really want.
Happiness is going to the babysitter who has all of those Charlie Brown and Snoopy videos and getting to watch them. I remember when I was in first grade, my pediatric dentist decided to perform an unscheduled tooth extraction and I ended up being sent to the babysitter. But then I got to watch You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown on her TV in her bedroom and drink soup for the rest of the day instead of going to school. Not bad at all.
Happiness is also renting a Peanuts flick every once in a while. It’s also getting to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas on TV in early December. Happiness is Mom finally buying It’s the Pied Piper Charlie Brown on VHS and then watching the documentary at the end.
Agony is seeing the clips in the documentary of all the Peanuts shows you haven’t watched.
Happiness is getting a stack of vintage paperback books of Peanuts strips for your enjoyment for Christmas, reading them all through in one day and then reading them again and again. It’s checking the comics section of the local newspaper every day for the daily reprinted Peanuts strip along with Garfield and Frank and Earnest (and, for a few years, the strip that my dad wrote twice weekly, but that’s another story).
It’s Schroeder teaching me to appreciate classical music and Beethoven. It’s rooting for Charlie Brown to get that kite to fly or to kick that football and then watching his hopes get dashed yet again. It’s Snoopy flying in circles around the Red Baron. It’s Lucy and her psychiatric booth, Linus and his blanket.
Happiness is hanging out with a neighborhood of tenacious kids and one weird dog that are as candid–or even more candid–about their approach to life than some real world adults. As an adult myself now, they keep delighted as well as humble.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Peanuts, I hope this blog will give you a better appreciation for it. As for those of you who are already fans, I hope this will tell you some new stories and let you revisit some old ones. I am adding links, of course, not just to cite my sources but to link you to material that explains it better than I can.
Charles Schulz: A Man of Talent
In studying literature, it is sometimes (but not always) beneficial to study the life of the author in order to better understand the text. This is definitely true of Charles M. Schulz and Peanuts.
Peanuts started as Charles Schulz’ brainchild in 1950. Following World War II, newspaper comics had been reduced from full-page artworks to the minimalist four-panel pieces we are more familiar with today. The format worked for the stories that Schulz wanted to tell with the medium. At the same time, however, Schulz’s work set a standard of artistry and storytelling that few comic strips today live up to.
Charles Monroe Schulz was born in Minneapolis in 1922. Schulz had aspirations to be a cartoonist and artist from a young age. His first published work was a drawing of the family dog Spike submitted to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.
After finishing high school, Schulz took a correspondence art course. His studies were interrupted in 1943 when he was drafted into the US Army to serve in the second World War–oddly enough, he was drafted only days after the death of his mother.
Schulz retired from the army in 1946 as a staff sergeant. His war service and tributes to his fellow soldiers would be touched on occasionally in Peanuts–notably with Snoopy remembering to call on wartime cartoonist Bill Maudlin on Veterans’ Day.
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With the war finished, Charles Schulz went to work in Minneapolis for the art correspondence school that he had taken courses for. Schulz’s first strip called Lil’ Folks began in 1947. Lil’ Folks was a four-panel affair depicting one-shot scenarios of little kids, and some of the ideas and characters he used there would later make their way into Peanuts. However, Schulz quit when his editor declined his request for a pay raise.
In 1950, Charles Schulz submitted some of his best Lil’ Folks strips to United Features Syndicate. The Syndicate changed the name of the strip to Peanuts–Schulz never actually liked the name because he thought people would confuse it with a character name (which is why he would feature the subtitle “Featuring Good Ol’ Charlie Brown” on Sunday strips).
(My theory is that ‘Peanuts’ might be the name of the street that the Browns and the Van Pelts live on)
Peanuts made an inconspicuous debut on October 2, 1950 in seven newspapers.
The strip began innocently enough, with Charlie Brown, Lucy, and a handful of other characters being sassy nursery schoolmates, Snoopy being a (more) normal puppy, and Linus as a baby that hadn’t touched the blanket yet.
Years passed, new characters appeared, notably Charlie Brown’s little sister Sally, and other members of the cast matured. By the end of the fifties, Charlie Brown and Snoopy were household names. Then, in December 1965, came the debut of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the first animated Peanuts film. (My mother was alive at the time but she did not watch the debut).
We’ve all heard of the Apollo 11 and its modules Columbia and Eagle that reached the Moon in November of 1969. Before Apollo 11 was the Apollo 10 mission in May of 1969, which was tasked with scouting out the Moon’s surface and finding the Apollo 11 landing site. The command module and unused Lunar module were named Charlie Brown and Snoopy, respectively.
In 1996 Charles Schulz was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In late 1999, Schulz was diagnosed with cancer. He created a farewell strip early in the year 2000 to be published on February 13…and then he passed away in the early morning before it even hit the presses.
At the time of Schulz’s death, Peanuts had reached 2,600 newspapers and been translated into 25 languages. As of 2016, Charles Schulz was the third highest-earning deceased celebrity. Charlie Brown still continues to be a staple of American popular culture.
Charles Schulz: The Man of Faith
One of the best and most remarkable things about Charles Schulz was that he was an openly religious man.
We all remember the scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas where Linus recites the angels’ visitation to the shepherds in Luke 2. Deciding to insert the religious “true meaning of Christmas” was an unprecedented and radical step, even for the 1960s when today’s secular culture was nowhere nearly as virulent as it is today.
While the special faced a lot of hurdles throughout production, the explicitly religious angle of the show was a cause for concern for director Bill Melendez. “We can’t do this. It’s too religious.” Schulz responded, “Bill, if we can’t do it, who else can?” Producer Lee Mendelson remembers Schulz explaining “If we can talk about what I feel is the true meaning of Christmas…it would really be worth doing.”
The studio executives had very deep misgivings about airing the special after they previewed it. They threatened that it would be a flop and therefore they would only air it once.
But then the special turned out to be a huge hit–especially because of Linus sharing the Bible passage. Out of the mouths of babes and infants, it is said, or rather boys attached to their security blankets (Psalm 8:2, see also Matthew 21:16).
A Charlie Brown Christmas won an Emmy award the following year. It’s been aired on television every holiday season ever since. To this day, it’s almost not Christmas without Charlie Brown.
Charles Schulz wasn’t born religious but converted to Christianity after coming home from the war. In a story quoted by Robert L. Short, Schulz recalled that after the war he found himself “very lonesome” and one night decided to attend a church in Minneapolis. He noticed that the church needed a new sign, so he volunteered his services to the minister to paint a new sign, and this kept him interested in attending and hearing the message.
Schulz never formally joined a specific church, but when he and his family moved to California he ended up teaching a Sunday school at a Methodist church in his town for about 12 years. He also raised his children to have moral values and to avoid drinking and swearing (even in the strip, Snoopy never drinks anything stronger than root beer). Beyond that and sharing his beliefs in his work, Schulz kept his religion close to his heart.
That;s all well and fine but here’s the catch: Schulz’s daughter Amy dated a guy who had some similar values to her own. Turned out, he was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka the church I am part of). She continued to investigate the Church even after she and that boyfriend broke up, the reason being that the lifestyle encouraged by the Church reminded her of how she had been brought up.
Charles Schulz was not thrilled about his daughter making this particular life choice. He told Amy, “Your church is either true or it’s a hoax. And I think it’s a hoax.”
After Amy was baptized, however, Schulz was very supportive of his daughter’s activities in the church. Like, the Most Supportive NonMember Parent Ever™. Amy gave the scoop to LDS Living a few years ago:
“He wrote me letters on my mission and he’d send me funny pictures of comics and Snoopy out tracting, stuff like that,” Johnson says. “He stood outside the temple and waited for me when it was freezing and soggy. He spoke at my mission farewell. He was just there for me every step of the way.”
Amy says that her joining the Church actually made her relationship with her father deeper. He knew that they believed in the same God and that everything that she did because of her faith she did for the Lord.
“As things grew, and as time went on, I would want to tell him more about the Church, and I would always start with, ‘I know how much you hate the Church, but . . .’ Finally, one day he said, ‘Would you stop saying that? I don’t hate the Church, but I love how we have this bond now where we both believe in Christ and the scriptures.’”
Every time I think about that story I am still amazed that THE Charles Schulz did that for his convert daughter. (To quote Charlie Brown “I think I’m gonna cry”)
Amy recalls her father saying the following about his work:
‘Americans want decency. They want decent entertainment. And I’ve always believed that. I always felt that if I ever did anything crude or raunchy, that God would literally strike the fingers off my hand.’
Charlez Schulz knew that our talents–our skills, our creativity, our genius–are gifts from God. That is a belief I share completely.
It’s because of Charles Schulz’s spirituality that I have that much more interest in the Bible. I can point at a scripture and say “Charlie Brown quoted that verse” or “Hey! Linus knows that scripture!”
‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ was the carol sung at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas and so ever since it’s been my favorite religious Christmas song.
Charlie Brown and his friends also have one-shot strips and adventures that are more akin to parables about human nature and, occasionally,the importance of living by moral principles.
The ‘parables’ of Peanuts was the subject of a book by Robert L. Short of the same name that I once found when I was working at that one thrift store in Utah. The book was writing from a Protestant/universal salvation angle but I still got a lot of good messages out of it.
It’s actually an important but underrated teaching in our Church, just because we are the “true Church” doesn’t mean that we have a monopoly on the Truth, and that there is truth to be found in other religious traditions, and that there are good people of other faiths and sometimes no faith at all. Charles Schulz is proof of that. It’s proof that God is the Father and Christ is the Savior of the entire human race.
There’s a story in the gospel of Luke where one of the disciples complains to Jesus that there was a man who wasn’t part of the formal group of disciples who was casting out devils in Jesus’ name. Jesus replied to that saying, “ Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.” (Luke 9: 49-50) Jesus might have well have been talking about Charles Schulz.
Read More:
How ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas Almost’ Wasn’t
The Team behind ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’
The Holiday Special that Continues to Defy Common Sense
How Charles Schulz Fought for Jesus
‘The Fir Tree’ by Hans Christian Andersen: The Story that Inspired Charlie Brown’s Tree
Wise and Foolish Heads on Young Shoulders
Grown-ups don’t have a monopoly on maturity: in fact, sometimes they’re the ones that are immature. And if you really pay attention to children, they’re actually a lot smarter than we give them credit for.
It is because of their childish appearance that Schulz was able to use the Peanuts gang to critique the shortcomings of humanity overall. People think that Peanuts was a strip for kids but Schulz insisted that it was for adults. In fact, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and the others act like grown adults in a lot of ways. For one, they have very advanced vocabulary. Schroeder plays entire concertos on what’s supposed to be a toy piano. Linus has a command of Bible verses to rival a minister.
The Peanuts kids aren’t paragons, they’re flawed: they gossip, they’re petty, they’re depressed, they’re insecure and not always smart about how they face their insecurity. Their imperfections, however, leave them room to grow, and sometimes they actually take the opportunity to face their fears, like when Linus was afraid to go to the library, or when Sally was afraid of starting kindergarten. Like all good art, Peanuts isn’t about how we want life to be but how life actually is, both the good and the bad.
What makes Peanuts stand out among comic strips is that instead of a cast of two to five regular characters we have multiple main characters with one to three supporting characters each. This is why the strip has so much breadth as well as depth, because the number of characters and their kinds of interactions can give rise to a number of scenarios.
Let’s segue into some character breakdowns:
Snoopy
Snoopy might be the only really “adult” considering that he’s a full grown dog, but he still has a streak of immaturity and pride, and sometimes he’s even petty towards his owner. Sometimes he goes absolutely feral, in fact. He also hates cats, but I don’t hold that against him because, well, he’s Snoopy.
Snoopy is most in touch with his “natural dog” as a pet that looks forward to mealtimes as the highlight of his day and likes to eat.
I think Snoopy was the character that Schulz wrote himself into the most. The smoking gun? Well there’s two. Snoopy’s attempts at writing and getting rejected by editors was a frequent trope throughout the strip, and Schulz struggled with professional rejection before Peanuts took off. Also Snoopy has daydreams as a World War I flying ace and occasional references to World War II, of which we know Schulz was a veteran.
The best thing about Snoopy is that he is the most imaginative character. He goes all the way with his flights (sometimes literal) into his fantasies. In the earlier strips, this is mostly about his writing and the Flying Ace gig. In the final days of the strip, Snoopy goes on other adventures, including being a Revolutionary War soldier with Woodstock. Snoopy is also a featured character in a crossover fan art, because who else could imagine themselves so easily in their favorite universe?
As far as I know, none of the neighborhood kids ever question Snoopy’s weirdness. He might occasionally get on their nerves (to the critique of “STUPID BEAGLE!” from Lucy), but they otherwise roll along with it. For a while, even Peppermint Patty was convinced that Snoopy was just another kid.
He challenges Lucy to an arm wrestling competition as the Masked Marvel, and she takes him on. He holds “Pawpet Shows” and the kids go to watch the performances. He plays shortstop on the baseball team. He goes to “wild parties” at Woodstock’s nest.
Snoopy will sometimes turn up in places where you’d least expect him with no explanation, not limited to Lucy’s bean bag when she’s in the middle of sulking.
Someone did ask once why Snoopy doesn’t just sleep inside of his doghouse instead of on top: the other two people just glared at them. The only rule with the Peanuts gang is, let Snoopy be Snoopy.
My favorite thing about Snoopy is his dancing. He dances to celebrate his mealtimes. He dances to celebrate his triumphs, he dances to welcome the snow, and he dances for no reason at all except the joy of it.
Read More:
Why Snoopy is Such a Controversial Character
How Snoopy Shaped Popular Memory of World War I
The Great Pumpkin and Flying Ace Snoopy
Woodstock
While we’re talking about Snoopy, let’s mention Woodstock. While I can’t imagine Charles Schulz having a high opinion of hippies, Woodstock was, in fact, named for the legendary 1969 music festival.
Woodstock is, of course, Snoopy’s best friend. He’s a frequent partner in Snoopy’s shenanigans. Sometimes Woodstock types while Snoopy dictates. Woodstock and a handful of other bird friends follow Snoopy into the wilderness on hikes.
Woodstock is an early sample of the trope character that speaks unintelligibly but other characters can understand them and will translate. However, Snoopy only translates for himself and, by extension, the reader.
Woodstock is also a little more combative than Snoopy, although he wasn’t a full-fledged Angry Bird. Maybe that’s just the impression I get from Woodstock’s vocalizations in the animated shows where his voice is frequently an aggressive mumble.
Woodstock and Snoopy have their quarrels but they come back together. There’s one touching story where Woodstock “fines” Snoopy twelve dollars for monopolizing the conversation with his cute little birdie girlfriend at a New Year’s party. When Snoopy finally gets the truth out of him, Snoopy hugs him and tells him, “Don’t you know you’re worth so much more to me than twelve dollars?” Poetic storytelling.
(Also, a quick shout-out to Snoopy’s brother Spike, for being weird and western. He lives closer to me than the rest of the actual Peanuts gang. Maybe I’ll run into him sometime.)
Charlie Brown
In The Parables of Peanuts Robert Short calls Charlie Brown the epitome of the natural man–that is, the man without the hope that comes from believing in Christ, or a “born loser” that is lost from Christ and puts their faith in winning the wrong things. A more secular way to say that is that he’s the most human, a typically good person but still flawed…although, I don’t think your average human has that much bad luck.
Charlie Brown’s life is Murphy’s Law in hyperactive mode. Everything he attempts turns into failure. Even where he has mild success something always goes wrong–his name got misspelled on his first bowling trophy, for example. His worst enemy is the tree that regularly eats his kites.
He never wins at baseball because his teammates don’t cooperate and his opponents don’t respect him. He has crippling anxiety to the point that he can’t work up the courage to talk to the little red-haired-girl he likes at school (All the characters deal with anxiety in one way or another, but Charlie Brown’s is so bad that it gives him stomach cramps: it’s clinical).
The other kids chew him out for his weaknesses, especially Lucy and Violet. The criticism doesn’t kill him on the outside–but as for on the inside, he tells Linus to number him among the walking wounded.
Being a victim himself, however, Charlie Brown isn’t above making mistakes himself. There was one time he got put on the school safety patrol and it got to his head to the point that he neglected his schoolwork. As a result his grades dropped and he lost his badge.
It also isn’t unheard of for Charlie Brown to occasionally succeed or know when to say the right thing.
Charlie Brown is also persistent. His baseball team is the worst and every pitch he throws gets batted back to him as a line drive that literally knocks off his socks. But he still loves baseball. And he has a dog that loves him, even if Snoopy drives him a little crazy.
Charlie Brown is actually my favorite Peanuts character for no better reason than pure sympathy. He gets teased and bullied. I was teased and bullied by my peers when I was his age. Heck, I was bullied up through high school.
One of the reasons that both I and Charlie Brown got teased and bullied was because our peers saw us as weak. I got made fun of because I was different from other people, probably more similar to Linus, but sometimes I would say or do something silly and people would merely exploit that, which is more like what Charlie Brown experiences.
Read More: The Summer of Peggy Jean
Sally
Lucy might complain about everything but Sally specifically complains about how unfair adults are, sometimes to their face.
It’s at school where Sally gives–and gets–the most flack. One time she accidentally brought home one of the classroom crayons, and she was sure that she was going to get the “Judo chop” for “stealing”.
She’s not the brightest student academically, but what she lacks in brains she makes up for in sarcasm.
The irony: she “makes friends” with the school building. She started out talking to it to vent, but, well, that changed.
For one series she started to carry around Snoopy to intimidate people: “Speak softly and carry a beagle” was her philosophy for that run, an adaptation of a similar saying from Theodore Roosevelt. Well…Sally let the power get to her head, and then Snoopy got distracted and she got beat up. Snoopy’s mother didn’t raise him to be a can of mace, among other things.
Sally’s gag is to occasionally come up with a saying to be her “philosophy”, which is really just a motto to snap back at anyone who talks to her, or sometimes something to say in order to sound smart.
She isn’t that annoying of a little sister to Charlie Brown but she does make him shake his head sometimes.
Read More:
Kathryn White: Reasons You Should Like Sally Brown
Kevin Wong: How Sally Made Me a Better Teacher
The Van Pelt Family
Before I go off about Lucy, I have a couple of thoughts about the Van Pelt children’s parents. To my knowledge, Mr. Van Pelt is never mentioned. My theory is that their dad is a minister. Lucy comes from the name Lucia, the name of an early Christian saint. Linus was a person mentioned in one of Paul’s epistles. Linus Van Pelt, I mentioned, has a good knowledge of scripture and I know from at least one incident his family has a large library that includes a twelve-volume Interpreter’s Bible–at the very least the family has a religious streak. I think Rerun’s real name might be Reuben.
Mrs. Van Pelt has a little more of a presence in the strip. This is owing to the fact that she takes Linus and later Rerun on bicycle rides in an attached back seat.
There was a series of strips where Mrs. Van Pelt acquired a tangerine-colored pool table. It became a sensation with the neighborhood mothers. The moms wanted to go over to the Van Pelts’ as soon as they were off to school, so they would rush through getting their kids ready in the mornings. The kids were not happy, and they took it out on Linus. Violet, who normally wears a ponytail, one day walks past Linus with her hair down because her mother was in too much of a rush to go over and play pool with his mother.
We also know that the kids have a grandmother that dislikes Linus’ blanket.
The Peanuts kids in general do talk about the adults in their lives sometimes, and those adults are not above criticism–that is unless you’re Linus’ school teacher Miss Othmar.
As for the Van Pelt children, is there sibling rivalry? Sibling “toxicity” might be a better term, especially between Lucy and Linus. And Rerun, being the youngest, is at the bottom of the pecking order.
Lucy
Anyway, Lucy. I don’t always swear, but I am very tempted to use the b-word to describe Lucy because she deserves it. She bosses around her siblings. She is mean to Charlie Brown at every opportunity, including at the psychiatrist booth. She insists that she is going to marry Schroeder even though she doesn’t care for his music or Beethoven. Lucy has delusions of being a queen if not very rich when she grows up. People tell her to her face that she’s shallow and vain, and she denies it.
Why is she so unpleasant? Maybe it gives her power.
Luring Charlie Brown into kicking that football and pulling it away at the last second? Classic gaslighting.
Lucy Van Pelt invented being a toxic person before using ‘toxic’ to describe people was a thing. EVERYONE in the squad knows Lucy is toxic. Even her closest friends sometimes get tired of her.
(She’s also a terrible baseball player–I wasn’t that good at baseball myself and played in the outfield but I wasn’t actively critical of my manager or the pitcher)
Only on rare occasions does the reader have the rare satisfaction of Lucy getting called out and succeeding in getting her to feel guilty or intimidated.
But sometimes, happily, Snoopy gets her to dance with him. Maybe she’s not a total monster after all.
Linus
Linus is as wholesome a character as Lucy is a toxic one. He does seem a little strange to the other characters, especially about the Great Pumpkin thing and the security blanket. But those quirks might be what makes Linus a better person than some of the more “grown-up” characters. He’s a lot more sensitive and wise. By keeping the blanket, at least, he is willing to admit that he does have his fears and anxieties.
Is Linus autistic? There is a good case to be made that he is.
(But there’s also a good case to be made that the blanket issue is rooted in something more sinister)
In general, Linus is smarter than the other kids give him credit for being. He’s kind of a nerd, too: I mean, who would create replicas of the Dead Sea Scrolls to bring to ‘Show and Tell’?
He also knows how to defend himself with the blanket from time to time. One time a couple of the girls were walking by and they called him a baby. He wraps the blanket into a cloak and tells them in a sinister voice, “I am Count Dracula from Transylvania!” They run screaming.
Linus also occasionally weaponizes his blanket. He knows how to YEET that thing.
An underrated reason to appreciate Linus is the fact that Linus is one of a small group of characters that is an actual friend to Charlie Brown and makes an effort to be nice to him.
Linus is probably the only character that has any real bad blood with Snoopy, but that’s only because Snoopy occasionally tries to snatch the blanket, sometimes using it to yeet Linus. And that’s only occasionally. Sometimes they’re partners in crime.
Linus also attempts to play fetch with Snoopy, only to be reminded time and again that Snoopy is not your average beagle.
His relationship with his dearly beloved schoolteacher Miss Othmar is a source of good drama.
In later strips he does appear as Charlie Brown’s classmate. I think Linus is smart enough that he could have skipped a grade, in spite of the blanket. (I refuse to think Charlie Brown is THAT dumb).
Rerun
I first met Rerun in a random episode of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show that I was fortunate enough to watch, but that story in turn was based on material from the strip that I was also fortunate enough to get in one of those little books I got for Christmas. In that story, Lucy persuaded Charlie Brown to let Rerun–only about one or two years old–play on the baseball team.
Their first game of the season, Rerun got up to bat and got four balls and it won Charlie Brown’s team the game. From the outset, however, Charlie Brown suspected something about the rare victory wasn’t quite right. Then Charlie Brown got a call to meet with one of the adults in charge of the local Little League, and he found out that the winning game had to be discounted because of a gambling scandal.
There is a hint that the parents might have blown the whistle. Apparently Rerun–yes, still-on-the-bottle Rerun–bet on Charlie Brown’s team to win (spoiler alert: Snoopy bet against him–for crying out loud Snoopy you’re the frigging shortstop!). It was only a five-cent bet but STILL!
Rerun becomes a major character in the later strips. He has some amusing interactions with his classmates at school. He is also good friends with Snoopy. Rerun does see Snoopy for what he is (aka not a normal dog) but Rerun also really wants a dog of his own.
Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Franklin
I’m lumping these three together because they are usually together in the strip. Peppermint Patty is a character that Schulz added to the strip to reflect the changing times in the real world (I’ll use PP for shorthand).
Peppermint Patty is a tomboy: she loves sports and outdoors, and when she was first introduced she stood out for being a girl character that wore pants and sandals all the time (although later on in the strip the other girls would regularly wear pants and more casual clothes). PP is a feminist as well as a feminist character. And she’s not afraid of talking through her fist–the Peanuts gang is a pretty violent bunch to start with but getting on PP’s bad side is generally a bad idea.
Peppermint Patty is a friend to Charlie Brown but she’s also a friendly sports rival, being from a different neighborhood. You could think that she is kind of a female foil for Charlie Brown, with her self-confidence opposed to Charlie Brown’s more withdrawn nature.
Does Peppermint Patty have a weakness, you ask? Academics.
Marcie is Peppermint Patty’s shadow and best friend. She’s the only main Peanuts character that wears glasses. She calls PP “Sir” most of the time, probably in response to PP’s tomboy streak (although PP insists that she stop).
What’s nice about Marcie is that when PP gets ahead of herself Marcie kind of tells her to back down. And sometimes readers have the benefit of Marcie deciding she’s had enough abuse from whoever’s picking on her, PP included.
Peppermint Patty and Marcie stick out not for calling Charlie Brown by his name but for calling him “Chuck” and “Charles” respectively. PP also has a crush on Charlie Brown but he’s just not that into her.
(Marcie likes Charlie Brown, too)
Franklin is also a friend of Peppermint Patty. Franklin has some notoriety because he’s the only African American character in the strip, and he was among the first of his background to appear in a mainstream comic strip. Franklin sits next to Peppermint Patty in class alongside Marcie, and he’s also one of her frequent critics.
(I think Franklin initially moved to Charlie Brown’s neighborhood but he ended up at PP and Marcy’s school–I think his family must have moved. However on checking the fandom wiki I learned that Franklin found out how “weird” Charlie Brown and his neighbors actually are and got weirded out.)
Franklin is more of a secondary character, but he does have some interesting quirks, as well as quirky relations. My favorite strip with Franklin is one where he is talking to PP about his grandfather. He relates that his grandfather doesn’t mind getting old: “He says that once you get over the hill you begin to pick up speed.”
Peppermint Patty also hangs out with Lucy Van Pelt sometimes, referring to her as ‘Lucille’. One time, the two of them went to get their ears pierced together. PP went in first and she screamed. Lucy heard her from the lobby and decided to bail. Well, who’s surprised, aside from PP herself?
Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Franklin go to a different school from the rest of the Peanuts gang, however this isn’t always consistent in their animated incarnations. In the strip itself there is at least one instance where PP goes to visit Charlie Brown’s class.
Read More:
Marcie and Unhealthy Relationships
Pacing, Progress, and Peppermint Patty
Schroeder
Charles Schulz loved music and listened a lot while working. Maybe that’s how he was able to transpose segments of classical pieces into the strip note for note. Schulz could get ideas from doing anything but he did get plenty from going to musical concerts and listening to music. His love for music is written into many strips but it is really embodied in the character of Schroeder.
Schroeder has that rare quality of being one of the few Peanuts characters from the early days of the strip that was still an important character later on.
Schroeder loves three things in life: baseball, his piano, and Ludwig Van Beethoven. His knowledge of biographical Beethoven’s facts is comprehensive enough to the point where he has legitimate questions about Beethoven’s love life.
One of the biggest tropes of the Peanuts strip is Lucy leaning against Schreoder’s piano to listen to him play and talk with him. She did it, ostensibly, because she “loved” Schreoder. Schreoder doesn’t return her feelings that much (who wouldn’t), and Lucy knows it.
Sometimes she does get fed up with it. There was that one devastating episode where Lucy threw Schreoder’s piano down a storm drain because she knew it was coming between them. (“It’s woman versus piano!”)
Lucy isn’t seen anywhere near Schroeder in the last few years of the strip. Although I miss their conversations, it’s probably for the best that they don’t interact anymore because she’s toxic anyway. People must have complained.
Schroeder does like other composers besides Beethoven. It has been hinted that he might have a thing for Brahms, for instance.
Schroeder is the catcher for Charlie Brown’s baseball team. He’s probably the most competent player on that disaster team as well, at least from what I can tell. Linus and Snoopy are also good players, but Lucy and the other outfielders…*sigh* they’re not even trying.
Schroeder is also a legitimately good friend to Charlie Brown, even if he does talk about Beethoven a lot. That may be an illustration of the fact that it’s more important to be someone who listens than to have something in common.
Read More:
Charles Schulz Understood Music Obsessives
Personality Disorders of the Peanuts Gang
A Sentimental Journey with Snoopy
Some of you may only be familiar with the old song “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” from the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Me, however? I first heard that song years and years before. It was on a recording played at a tavern in Normandy while Snoopy drank root beer and reminisced and Woodstock played a violin.
That was a scene in my favorite Peanuts film ever, Bon Voyage Charlie Brown! (And Don’t Come Back) (1980). Mom rented it for me from Hastings when I was a little girl, about second or third grade-ish. ‘
Charlie Brown, Linus, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie go to France on a short foreign exchange trip. Snoopy and Woodstock tag along. (That’s right, it’s four unaccompanied minors, a bird, and a beagle travelling international!) Snoopy and Woodstock have their peak shenanigans, including Snoopy for some inexplicable reason being able to fly first-class.
When they get to France, of course, Snoopy and Woodstock take off for the tavern where the scene I just described takes place. “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” is part of a medley of songs from both of the World Wars that Snoopy plays on a jukebox.
Peppermint Patty and Marcie also have some fun character moments on the adventure, fueled by Marcie studying from a French guide book and PP’s culture shock. The narrative of the story, however, centers around Charlie Brown. For his stay in France, Charlie Brown receives a mysterious invitation to stay at the Chateau de Malvoisin–roughly translated as the house of the ‘Bad Neighbor’. Sketchy, right? I won’t go into spoilers, but Charlie Brown it turns out has a family history connection to the Chateau.
Animated Peanuts has some catchy music, a precedent we owe to the musical genius of Vince Girialdi. The music score for Bon Voyage, however, is exceptional. I must have watched the movie about ten times whenever I rented it as a kid because the musical themes and the song medley from the tavern have stuck with me for YEARS.
The last time I watched Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown was about five years ago, admittedly on bootleg. I remembered from my childhood that the film had referenced World War I, but on the more recent viewing I discovered that it was actually about both world wars. Curious, I braved an internet search. As it turns out, the Chateau de Malvoisin is a real place, and the place names of the nearby towns of Morville-de-sur-Andelle and La Herone are also real.
When Charles Schulz was in the army, he and his battalion were billeted at Malvoisin for six weeks in 1945 before they went to the front in Germany. Having learned this, suddenly everything made sense. Bon Voyage was a personal project for Schulz.
It’s weird what childhood nostalgia does to a person. Don’t worry: next time I watch Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown I will acquire it legally.
Friends Remembered Forever
There are a lot of comic strips out there, but Peanuts is universally loved for being wholesome as well as meaningful. It is one of those franchises that has something to say about a lot of different things. People connect to it. Once in a blue moon at elementary school we would watch a Peanuts video, but then in my high school government class we watched You’re Not Elected Charlie Brown as a review on concepts.
When I was in college, on the first day of my least favorite class the professor (an American literature enthusiast at that) shared a strip of Snoopy howling at the moon to illustrate a concept called ‘the hermeneutics of suspicion,” that is “A does not necessarily relate to B”. For that particular strip, my professor explained, you cannot necessarily prove that Snoopy feeling like he was missing something was the reason he howled at the moon. Or at least that’s how I remember it.
The problem was I never got the concept he was trying to teach with that strip. If I had I probably would have done better on my term paper. However, it goes to show how Peanuts continues to be a cultural staple and provider of food for the mind and soul.
Peanuts is a staple of a time period (the 1950s and 60s) that people today look back on as being simpler. Yet when you actually read the strip, the characters themselves are faced with the concept that life is actually complicated and full of failures, mistakes, and losses that add up over time. That burden of quiet grief is always true for individuals even when society around them is enjoying a “golden age”.
And in spite of how happy and sheltered adults want the lives of children to be, blogger Maria Popova and Schulz biographer David Michelias both observe that Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and others in their peer group have lives that are anything but idyllic. Their individual quirks alternately offset and magnify their challenges: some days Linus’s security blanket gives him strength, at other times it makes him a target for trouble. Well, maybe that’s the reason Peanuts resonates with me put in words.
People like Peanuts for different reasons. Because it has been around for so long it is easy to boil down the continuing popularity of the franchise to marketable nostalgia, which is understandable. It’s hard to not get excited when you see a Valentine candy bar with Snoopy on the box.
However, although the setting and stories may seem a little dated, being from a time before smartphones and the last two decades of social-political upheaval, much of the simple wisdom or unbridled sass of Peanuts still holds water. The strip is rarely politically or otherwise explicit, but Peanuts has the tongue-in-cheek philosophy of life that, understood properly, keeps one from taking life’s problems too seriously and reminds one of what matters the most.
Funny story: Peanuts debuted in October 1950. I didn’t realize this until I began working on this post, but next month will mark the seventieth–yes, seventieth, anniversary of the strip. Under current circumstances, we might not be able to do much to celebrate. However, now is as good a time as any to discover the strip, the cartoons, the world, and the characters of Peanuts and fall in love all over again.
In the farewell strip, Charles Schulz wrote, “Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy…how can I ever forget them….” How can any of us, the fans, forget what Schulz gave to us?
Acknowledgements: Ideas for the discussions in this post are informed by Maria Popova’s blog posts on Charles Schulz and his life’s work. Unless otherwise stated, all comic strips are from GoComics.com and/or Pinterest. ‘Peanuts’ is the property of Peanuts Worldwide LLC. This blog post is not officially sponsored.
Read more:
Threadless: Betchya Didn’t Know These 5 Facts About “Peanuts”
Strips about Mental Wellness in Peanuts
The Apprentice Chronicles 
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