July 29, 1953: Schnozzle

One theme that Schulz returns to over and over is that of personal empowerment vs. the domination of others.

That is to say, here Charlie Brown is happy that another character has made a bigger mistake than he tends to, and takes delight in pointing that out. When Patty corrects him, he immediately retracts and feels sorry for himself. He goes directly from happy-extrovert-superior to sad-introvert-inferior, flipping along all three axises at once.

Charlie Brown comes to dwell most often in the later triad in the years to come. This seems to tie in with his "wishy-washy" character, although that is a term that hasn't been mentioned in the strip yet and won't be for some time. We'll discuss this more later.

How does one come to believe that it's called a "schnozzle?" Is this related to the slang term for a nose, a "schnozzola?" A quick Google search suggests it might be.

July 28, 1953: Loudmouth Lucy

Characters in Peanuts tend to interact in pairs. Snoopy and Lucy as a pair are sometimes friendly and sometimes antagonistic. This is the first hint of the discord to come.

July 27, 1953: Schroeder's On Fire

It is the summer months in the strip right now, making this feasible. I can't help but think that big hole overhead must affect the acoustics somehow.

One interesting thing about Peanuts' art style is how the characters' mouths disappear when closed. It's particularly evident on Schroeder's face here, since he doesn't speak in this strip.

When viewed from the front, the characters' mouths have generally been visible up until now, even if only as a short line. We'll see in the years to come that Schulz plays around with this a bit, that there will be times when characters seen from the front will strangely have no mouths.

Sunday, July 26, 1953: Guess what's for dinner

Another mud pie strip. I don't think girls largely bother with mud pies anymore, but I can't bring myself to mourn this development. The only reason eating one of these would not cause food poisoning, I would think, is because it's not even food in the first place.

The word "de-luxe," meaning luxurious or opulent and nowadays usually represented as "deluxe," is one of those terms that the world of advertising has brought us. I'm not quite sure of its origins however, and a minute spent in Google doesn't clear the matter up much.

July 25, 1953: Fussing with Lucy

We've already seen strips in which Lucy fusses over something to Charlie Brown, who blandly walks away, sometimes after dumping something on Lucy's head. This won't be the last one, either. Charlie Brown seems to lose this ability as Lucy becomes a more formidable opponent. These are "turnabout" strips, even though they don't involve a chase.

This strip also brings in another developing concept, Lucy's propensity to go wildly overboard in describing something, first seen back when exulting in her Checkers winning streak.

July 23, 1953: Context

This might seem like a throwaway joke, but I think it points to something very important. The characters are missing a commonality of experience that would enable each of them to understand the other.

Without commonality, only with effort can people understand another's perspective. Here, by each assuming the other is speaking in familiar terms, the characters are unable to communicate effectively.

Using Schroeder for this strip works because he's the character with the most dissimilar perspective of the kids. He's an artist, and his focus is a higher goal. This, I would say, is at the root of his differences with Lucy. Even Snoopy is more in tune with the other kids than Schroeder.

We still get strips in which Schroeder is playing ordinary kid games, but as the strip continues we'll see him doing this less and less.

July 22, 1953: How did we get from there to here?

This is a common pattern for strips around this time: Charlie Brown is exults in being right about something, and the character who was wrong, instead of giving him satisfaction, responds with a non-sequitur cut down.

The ages of the characters have already become somewhat obscured, and we're not even three years in. Remember, Patty is older than Charlie Brown, who is older than Violet. She's already taller than him (she might even be the tallest character), and she teams up often with Patty as equals, which implies comradeship. But when it comes to the characters' intelligence, Schulz still seems to go by the pre-established age order: in cases where characters are arguing, the correctness hierarchy, highest to lowest, is Patty, Charlie Brown, Violet, then Lucy. (Schroeder's sphere is specialized knowledge so he trumps them in his area of interest, Shermy doesn't appear very often, and Linus and Snoopy don't talk.)

Chagrimace!

July 20-21, 1953: Piano interlude

July 20


The first strip comments on the plight of the working artist.

July 21


The second, the artist's quest for respect.

It is easy to see the Schroeder strips as a metaphor for Schulz's own desire to be taken seriously. Maybe this is why he often uses Schroeder as an audience for Charlie Brown's efforts at cartooning, in which we can just as easily imagine Schulz poking fun at himself.

Sunday, July 19, 1953: Snoopy's come to accept the sprinkler

This strip, if your only experience with Peanuts is the later era, is striking in how it treats Snoopy like just a dog. No abundant imagination, no literary pretensions, no "world famous" anything, no Woodstock, no "Happiness is" smarm, no walking on his back legs, and no thought bubbles.

This strip is, I think, padded out a bit. Particularly Schroeder's line "We can't.. we just can't" and Lucy's "You don't understand," both of which seem kind of hollow; the only reason they don't just say "We can't because he's sitting in the sprinkler" is because that would spoil the reveal. Probably panels seven and eight could be removed and the rest rearranged to make the point in fewer panels. Remove the top line of three panels and just four remain, exactly the length of a classic Peanuts daily strip.

Still not a bad strip though. It is a funny joke in the end. Snoopy's smiling expression sells it for me.

July 18, 1953: Picnic-school

This is the first time in my life I've ever heard of picnic-school.