Charlie Brown sucks at checkers, now it's time to demonstrate how bad he is at marbles.
I notice that his persecutors are exclusively female. Shermy, despite his harsh words in the first strip, is the least antagonistic character towards him of the cast. Lucy and Patty dispense game beatdowns, Violet throws him out of her house on a whim, and Snoopy is a mocking presence.
And yet the characters don't seem to notice yet how put-upon CB is, so it doesn't really register to us, yet, as a genuine phenomenon.
Interesting observation about CB's antagonists almost all being female. Even the Little Red Haired Girl is an antagonist of sorts because of her unattainability. Perhaps this was Schulz's way of underscoring CB's ongoing humiliation ("Ha ha! You got beat by a *girl*!!!), or maybe it's because most of the key characters are girls. On the other hand, CB seems to get along pretty well with the boys. Curiously, the one female character he gets along with the best is Peppermint Patty, who is, of course, the least "girly" of the girls.
ReplyDelete