Charles Schulz Post 2

I could get a sense of what the next section was going to be about when I read the title of the first chapter “Class of One.” Charles wasn’t exactly what someone may call outgoing. He was very awkward around girls and could never get the courage to go and talk to them. According to his cousin Lorraine, “He’d stand in the window and watch her go by on the St. Croix. He’d say, ‘Oh I’d like to meet her.’ Very quiet, so no one else could hear” (Michealis 105). Although Charles was obviously not much of a brave guy when it came to women, I cannot blame him because his family moved around a lot. It was hard for him to make new friends when they were moving around the twin cities, especially a self-conscious sophomore like Charles Schulz. I can definitely draw parallels between Charles Schulz and Charlie Brown because they both were very afraid to talk to girls as shown in the cartoon below.

Charles decided to forgo college and continue to cartoon, but he soon received his draft papers. Unfortunately, he received bad news about his family as well. His mother, who had been doing a lot better lately, had fallen ill once again. This time, however, there would be no recovery because her cancer could not be cured. Charles, who was nicknamed Sparky, was not happy with any of it, according to the author, “For Sparky, the most harrowing part of his mother’s torment was that no one told her that her disease was incurable. She remained in the dark until the bitter end” (127). Charles really wanted to have his mother see the fruits of his work, but she never had the chance. He felt so helpless and wished that they could’ve done more, but with the barber’s salary his father, Carl, was receiving and health care at the time, Dena Schulz had little chance of survival. The combination of his dad’s ultra busy schedule and his mom’s premature death may have carried over with him into his cartoons, which don't show adult figures just voices of the parents.

Michaelis, David. Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.

"Comics.com." Comics.com. 2008. Comics.com. 24 Nov 2008 .

Throughout Charles Schulz life he did many things he enjoyed and many things he disliked; however, no matter what he could always convey his experiences with a comic. As a young child, Charles Schulz moved from St. Paul, Minnesota to Needles, California. He did not enjoy Needles at all; he referred to his two years there as a “miserable life.” He did well in school, but he did not make very many friends. To describe his life in Needles he made, “an outcast- his most isolated character, Spike, a gaunt, desert-hardened-for community-to bring the desert’s peculiar immediacy and remoteness…” (Michealis 48). The cartoon shown below depicts just that, Spike, the isolated dog. He shows his loneliness in Needles where he didn’t make very many friends, but one thing he always had was the ability to draw and depict that “miserable life” in a way that makes everyone laugh.

Charles also dealt with self-confidence issues as a child. He described himself as “bland” or “blank.” The author comes in to defend him saying, “…it was not he who was featureless, it was the world he grew up in- flat, impoverished in language, stricken by silences, stripped to essentials or less” (Michealis 65). In other words, he wasn’t a dull kid; it was just a dull society. No one could truly understand his gift yet and neither could he because no one paid much attention to him. In the comic below Charles shows how he felt as a kid, in that he thought that he bored everyone.




Michaelis, David. Schulz and Peanut: A Biography. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
"Comics.com." Comics.com. 2008. Comics.com. 13 Nov 2008 <http://comics.com/peanuts?DateAfter=1975-10-03&DateBefore=1975-10-03&Order=s.DateStrip+DESC&PerPage=1&Search=&x=30&y=13>.
"Comics.com." Comics.com. 2008. Comics.com. 13 Nov 2008 <http://comics.com/peanuts/1957-07-30/>.

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