Charles Schulz, the creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip, would have been 100 this year
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English lesson number 533. This, right here, is a great way for you to upgrade your skills in English. This is the third of our 2022 holiday special lessons, and today we’ll talk about the Peanuts comic strip. Charles Schulz, the creator, was born 100 years ago last month, so I thought this was a good time to talk about his world, his comic strip, that entertained millions of people—and still does, even after his death.
The expression today is “comic relief” and we have a song of the week. Let’s dive in.
‘Peanuts’ showed an adult word through the eyes of children
The world of “Peanuts” is a world without adults. When grown-ups are needed in the story, which is not very often, they appear only with speech bubbles or, very occasionally, with just a part of their bodies in the frame. In animated specials, the voice of an adult is a garbled mess.
But don’t be fooled. “Peanuts” includes what we might call adult topics: Friendship, loneliness, love, ambition, diversity, happiness, disappointment. But the genius of the “Peanuts” comic strip is that these universal human stories are told through the eyes of children, and one dog.
Oh, the dog. Snoopy is the black-and-white beagle that lives in a small red house. You often see him lying on his back on top of his house. Though he doesn’t talk—he’s a dog, after all —he does have thoughts, which appear in speech bubbles. He has a typewriter, which he uses often. Snoopy dreams of being an author. He dreams of many things: being a fighter pilot was one of his most vivid aspirations. Snoopy was one of the first characters to give human personality traits to dogs—something filmmakers and storytellers take for granted now.
The other characters are just as rich. There’s Charlie Brown, the “lovable loser,” who suffers from anxiety and low self-esteem. There’s the prankster, Lucy, who always pulls the football away when Charlie Brown wants to kick it. Peppermint Patty and Marcie are best friends, but they both have a crush on Charlie Brown. Schroeder has dreams of being a concert pianist. Linus clings to his “safety blanket .” Woodstock, the bird, adds comic relief . Franklin was the only minority in the Peanuts gang.
Seventeen thousand eight hundred ninety-seven: that’s how many “Peanuts” comic strips Charles Schulz drew—and yes , he drew them all, never relying on other illustrators or computers to produce his drawings. His contract stipulated that when he couldn’t draw any more, the strip would stop. Schulz died on February 12, 2000, aged 77. His final Peanuts cartoon appeared on February 13, the next day.
“Peanuts” was one of the most successful comics in history; it earned its creator over a billion dollars in his lifetime. The comics inspired television specials, a feature film, amusement park rides, and lots and lots of stuffed animals.
The themes in “Peanuts” are timeless, but the strip belongs to a different age. From 1950 until 2000, the entire second half of the Twentieth Century, people around the world read the “Peanuts” cartoons in the back pages of their printed newspapers. When the strip stopped, the day after Charles Schulz’s death, it appeared in over 2,000 newspapers.
The cartoon continues to run in syndication. But a lot of the world doesn’t get a printed newspaper. Yes, you can find the cartoons online. But there was something about the experience of seeing just one four-paneled comic a day. And if you missed a day, you missed the cartoon. You can still get a little of that experience by visiting Peanuts.com. There’s one posted every day.
Advice, 5 cents
He wrote one a day for fifty years! The appearance of the characters did change a very little bit over time. It’s fun to look at the very earliest versions to see how the different characters looked. But in the vast majority of the strips, the characters and the penmanship all look the same.
Fifty years! He published one every day for fifty years. If you’re into this, there’s a great biography of Charles Schulz. It’s called “Schulz and Peanuts “; it came out in 2008. It has a bright yellow cover.
Great stories make learning English fun
