Charlie Brown Lucy Pulling Trick on Charlie Again

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All Your Life, Charlie Brown. All Your Life.

The consummate history of Lucy's pulling the football away.

Photo illustration by Derreck Johnson. Photo by Thinkstock

Everyone has their favorite telltale signs of the approaching autumn: Mother Nature maxing out the hue and saturation sliders on her favorite arboreal subjects. The chill in the air that makes cardigans strain for the attending of their mustachioed owners. The unfortunate intrusion of pumpkin flavoring into our daily beverages. On the comics pages for years, i sign of fall loomed in a higher place all others. I'm speaking, of course, of the annual Saga of the Swipe: Lucy, Charlie Brownish, and that infernal football.

This sacred autumnal drama, repeated nearly every September or Oct for over 50 years, has become our collectively-acknowledged epitome for the uneasy tension between trust and betrayal, hope and despair. To a kid, of course, it was the moment of failure that mattered—non the metaphor. No single human activity meliorate encapsulated a kid'due south feeling of powerlessness, and I felt Charlie Brown's frustration and disappointment with every os in my body. As the years went past, Lucy'south seemingly compulsive need to torment poor Charlie began to gnaw at me. I started to wonder—what drove Lucy to unrepentantly torture Charlie Chocolate-brown in this fashion, yr after year? It's true that Charlie Brownish's fail epic is in keeping with Charles Schulz's darker sensibilities (when asked why he never let Charlie kick the football game, he famously replied, "You lot tin can't create humor out of happiness"). But I wanted something more—an answer from the characters themselves.

Fortunately, every strip Schulz e'er drew is compiled in a multivolume Peanuts collection, and in that location's even aPeanuts wiki, so I began at the beginning, hunting for and examining each football game comic in seriatim, from the 1950s onward, to run into if a larger pattern might emerge from Schulz's boot chronicles. What I discovered was a surprisingly complex story told over decades, with twists, turns, and evolving character motivations that are far richer than might appear from a yearly glance at the funny pages.

Lucy herself has offered a myriad of justifications over the years for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory: physiological (1966: a "ten-billion-to-one" muscle spasm), Ecclesiastical (1980: "To everything at that place is a flavor … and a time to pull away the football"), psychological (1975: "I'k non your mother, Charlie Brown"), sociological (1971: "This year's football was pulled abroad from you through the courtesy of women'southward lib"), and philosophical (1974: "In every program, Charlie Chocolate-brown, there are ever a few concluding-minute changes"). In a meta-moment, Lucy even points to the larger meaning of this almanac human action: "Symbolism, Charlie Brown! The ball! The want! The triumph! It'southward all there!" (1996). This echoes a dialogue they had 10 years earlier (Charlie Brownish: "Somehow, I've missed the symbolism." Lucy: "You likewise missed the ball, Charlie Chocolate-brown").

Just why did Lucy start yanking the football game away in the offset place? It's true that the first time Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown, it's an innocent gesture—she simply doesn't want Charlie Chocolate-brown's dingy shoes to mar her brand new football. In fact, in the aforementioned strip, Lucy even lets Charlie Brown try again, withoutpulling away the ball. (Charlie Chocolate-brown trips over the ball anyway, of course.) But just a few years later, in 1953, is the truthful origin story for Lucy'south sadistic game. In this pivotal strip, Lucy herself struggles to kick a football. Over and over she tries to punt the ball and flubs her kicks. And what does Charlie Brown exercise? He publicly and cruelly mocks her.

Charlie Brown: You're hopeless! That was the worst kick I've ever seen!
Lucy: Well after all … I'g just a little girl, you know …
Charlie Dark-brown: Lilliputian girls don't belong on football fields! Go home!
Lucy: I don't understand … I was the star fullback in plant nursery school …
Charlie Chocolate-brown: Well, don't stand around here! Proceed Abode!! Go out of here!

Is there any wonder why Lucy would choose to embarrass Charlie Brownish with a football year after year? Her humiliation at the hands of Chuck was a formative experience in the young girl's life. But the story goes even deeper. Twice in the weekbefore this early football-themed comic appeared, Schulz ran strips that featured Charlie Brown failing to kick the footballall on his own. First, he simply misses the ball, and a few days afterward, in a darkly existential moment, nosotros see a forlorn Charlie Brown dwarfed by the gigantic goal posts nether which his kick has fallen pathetically brusk. A week subsequently, in the pivotal comic quoted above, Charlie Dark-brown transfers his feelings of im-punt-ence by lashing out at poor little Lucy.

In one case we view Lucy and Charlie Brown's autumnal tango in light of this poignant origin story—a bicycle of pain and humiliation endured and transmitted—their annual football rite takes on a darker border, and Lucy's quips have the biting, sardonic twinge of someone who is not just out for fun, only forrevenge. 1961: "Don't you lot trust anyone any more than?" 1963: "A woman's handshake is not legally binding." 1969: "Never listen to a woman's tears, Charlie Brown." And, in a shockingly night strip from 1970, Lucy recites and interprets a long, withering passage from Isaiah: "How long [will you neglect at this]? ALL YOUR LIFE, Charlie Brown, all your life!" As this series progresses, Lucy is no longer simply the trickster—she is an injustice keeper, nurturing her acrimony until it turns into something far more consuming than the original offense.

But so, in the belatedly 1970s, the series turned a corner. In an uncharacteristically sober moment for the strip, in that location appeared a sequence of strips where Charlie Brown took seriously ill. When Lucy hears that Charlie Brown's return from the hospital is uncertain, she breaks down, realizes how much he means to her, and promises that she'll let him kick the brawl, if only he'll get amend. Then, in August of 1979, upon Charlie Brownish'south recovery, Lucy does something that she had not done since he showtime exiled her from the football field as a toddler—she lets him kicking the football game. Of course, Charlie Brownish beingness Charlie Brown, he misses the ball anyway (and Lucy gets karmic retribution for all those years of trickery in the class of a cleaved arm), merely the cathartic moment is Lucy's holding of the football, not the unsuccessful kicking that inevitably follows.

Interestingly, in the ensuing years, Lucy went back to her old tricks, yanking the football away every autumn. Set in her means, Lucy can't change her behavior after l years, but the near loss of her bald-headed sparring partner served as a catalyst for her own personal "reboot" from teaser to teacher. Lucy now yanks the ball away not out of malice, only with a sly, loving intention. Her post-swipe comments in more contempo strips range from the contemplative (1986: "You lot look forward all year to a special moment, and before yous know it, it's over") to the inspirational (1989: "Recall how the years go past, Charlie Brown … think of the regrets you lot'll have if you never gamble anything …"). Acting with a nickel's worth of hard-won wisdom, Lucy now wields the football like a Zen master with a keisaku (awakening stick). Afterward all these years, Lucy deals the stinging accident of failure each fall in society to recalibrate Charlie Brown's focal point, and to drive home the lesson that Schulz may well take meant all along: It'southward not the football that matters, Chuck, it'south us!

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Source: https://slate.com/culture/2014/10/the-history-of-lucys-pulling-the-football-away-from-charlie-brown-in-peanuts.html

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