Calvin and Hobbes
Thursday, July 28th, 2005I’ve recently been rereading all of Calvin and Hobbes, something I haven’t done for many years.
It is interesting, and perhaps obvious, that I now see it in a completely different light; jokes that once completely escaped me due to references and vocabulary outside my scope are now totally clear, and Calvin and Hobbes as a whole is much more comprehensible. However, as a result, I find it much less entertaining in terms of comedic value, though no less gripping; at its core, Calvin and Hobbes is a very sad, melancholy strip.
The majority of the strips revolve around the title characters- the wildly imaginative Calvin and his friend, Hobbes, a stuffed tiger- as they traipse through a beautiful world of vast fields and forests, of streams and hills made for exploring. In the summer, they can often be found wandering about gorgeous watercolor landscapes, while in the winter, they go sledding through endless perfect white snow. The friends go on adventures, start clubs, and play elaborate games together, and it is often easy to imagine that Calvin and Hobbes will forever inhabit this world, locked in childhood and eternally together.
The sadness of the strip stems from the element of reality Watterson grants his world- there is a plethora of adults and third parties (such as Susie) to interfere with Calvin’s idealized childhood world, and often they take pains to point out that Hobbes is ultimately a stuffed tiger. Calvin is never shown to react to these statements, suggesting he either denies them wholly or ignores them; he himself once explains that “ignorance is bliss.” The adults rarely encourage Calvin’s imagination, and whenever they acknowledge Hobbes’ existence, their expressions and tone are clearly condescending in nature. This suggests that even in the world of the strip, Hobbes is ultimately not real; that everyone, including Susie, realizes Calvin’s best friend is of his own creation. In addition, Watterson sporadically gives us glimpses of Calvin without Hobbes whenever the former goes to school, where he is victim to bullying and is a problem child perpetually in the principal’s office. At home with Hobbes, Calvin thrives as an imaginative, intelligent child given to bouts of mischief, while at school, he is alone and largely friendless. The most notable examples of this are Calvin’s repeated incidents with the bully Moe, and the arc where he is pressured to play baseball, only to be mocked and scorned. The world outside of Hobbes is cruel and merciless, yet undeniably there.
As a result, unlike other strips, Calvin and Hobbes does not give the impression that Calvin lives an eternal, timeless childhood existence. Rather, one feels that this is a world that moves on, and that there is a larger reality that Calvin denies but must inevitably grow into. The reader must at once appreciate the adventures of and deep relationship between a boy and his tiger, which evoke an idealized childhood, and contrast these with reality; the reality hinted at in the strip, and the reality the reader himself knows. It is easy to conceive of Calvin eventually growing up and moving on, however horrible that visual may be. Though Watterson chose to end the strip on an optimistic note by sending Calvin and Hobbes off on another grand adventure, he could easily have shown Calvin finally affected by all the seriousness the people around him seem so intent on forcing upon him and had him mature, effectively ending Calvin’s childhood along with the strip; that he chose the former rather than the latter is something for which I am eternally grateful.
Ultimately, I find the sadness of Calvin and Hobbes parallels the sadness of life itself, as we mature and grow, and all our childhoods are blown away by the world we are forced to inherit. I never lived a childhood like Calvin’s, with its beautiful seasons and vistas, but I look back and see my own reflected; a time when I thought summers were endless, when it seemed like I had all the time I could ever want to waste, free of guilt. It is horrible to think that I’ll never see such a time again.
