These ***Peanuts ***cartoons prove ***Charlie Brown ***is pop culture’s patron saint of insomniacs. *Peanuts *ran for 50 years, and in that half-century, creator Charles Schulz cultivated many iconic recurring bits. One of the funniest was the refrain of Charlie Brown agonizing at night, unable to fall asleep.
Most of these comics started out the same way. “Sometimes I lie awake at night,” Charlie Brown would opine, before explaining what particular dread was keeping him up this time.
And usually, Charlie Brown would get an unexpected response, courtesy of a “voice” that “comes to [him] out of the dark,” usually to offer a frank, but frankly unhelpful answer to his questions about life, the universe, and everything.
These rank high among Peanuts’ best cartoons, and they’re also the Peanuts strips that will make readers relate to Charlie Brown the most.
“Is life more like golf, or is it more like baseball?” That’s the deep, existential conundrum that has Charlie Brown’s head in a vice in this classic *Peanuts *cartoon. Chuck tries, and fails, to get some sleep. And as often turned out to be the hilarious case with this recurring Peanuts riff, he does get an answer, but not one that’s going to help him rest or provide any comfort.
That is: “try shuffleboard.” That’s the game that is most apt metaphor for life, according to the mysterious voice in the dark that answers Charlie Brown’s question. Yet, considering how behind the scenes *Peanuts *creator Charles Schulz was actually an ultra-competitive lover of games and sports, there might just be something to it, for those readers willing to dig deeper.
Here, Charlie Brown shows just how deep-seated his anxieties really are. Even when there’s nothing to really keep him up at night, the lack of things to worry about keeps him up at night. “I really have no complaints,” he says, tucked into bed but wide awake, as Snoopy snoozes on top of his legs, having zero trouble passing out, per usual.
“We appreciate your attitude,” the voice in the darkness says. One might think this would comfort Charlie Brown, and allow him to rest easy. But this is a kid with the weight of the world on his shoulders; even if he has nothing personally to be stressed about, give him a minute, and he’ll find something about his friends, or the state of the world, to feel dread over.
“Why does a person have to lie awake all night worrying about everything?” Charlie Brown asks himself in this *Peanuts *cartoon. It’s the classic insomniac’s dilemma: Chuck is anxious about his anxieties making him lose sleep, and it’s keeping him awake. “Why should a person be burdened with all the cares of the world?”
Snoopy was the GOAT of Peanuts. The MVP. These comics definitively show why, tracing his evolution across 50 years of the cartoon’s history.
It’s a fair question, but Snoopy doesn’t have much time for it. “Try sleeping,” the beagle thinks as he dozes atop the comforter. It’s an example of Snoopy’s penchant for sardonic remarks, but it’s also a cold hard truth. The only real balm for Charlie Brown’s late-night anxieties is going to be finally konking out, but it’s not that easy.
The thing that made Peanuts’ depiction of Charlie Brown’s insomnia so funny was the call-and-response nature of the bit. The round-headed kid is tucked into bed, in the middle of the night, plagued by seemingly rhetorical questions. Such as: “Where have I gone wrong?”. Except Chuck gets answers, but they don’t help. Like, at all.
“This is going to take more than one night,” the “voice” responds. Whether it’s Charlie Brown’s subconscious answering, or received wisdom coming from Charles Schulz, the voice is rarely very helpful. Usually, it only makes Chuck’s anxiety, and his sleeplessness, way worse. Which, of course, is the crux of the joke.
This Peanuts comic gets deep. Charlie Brown is worried about much bigger things than his own problems in this *Peanuts *strip. “Can my generation look to the future with hope?” he asks, concerned about the way the world is headed. Hysterically, this question actually flummoxes the voice in the dark, which sputters as it tries, and fails, to respond.
“It sort of depends,” the voice hems and haws, “if…when…who…we…and.” It’s a low-key bleak punchline, suggesting Charles Schulz shared his young Peanuts character’s anxiety about the future. Notably, while Snoopy usually snored through Charlie Brown’s bouts of insomnia, the last frame here shows the beagle awake, and now filled with dread like his owner, at the voice’s troublesome response.
This laugh-out-loud *Peanuts *cartoon shows that anxiety and nervousness run in Charlie Brown’s family. Here, after making the mistake of teaching his younger sister Sally why she should be stressed out, Chuck pays for it. He’s already lying awake in bed, like normal, when a voice comes to him from the dark. But not the usual voice. This time, it’s Sally.
“I’ve been worrying about everything,” she says. Including him and his future. “I worry you’ll never amount to anything,” Sally tells him, pouring her newfound fears into her brother’s ear, until it tuckers her out. Having unburdened herself, Sally goes off to bed, leaving Charlie Brown to think: “I guess I’ll just lie here and worry…”
“Maybe I can change my life around,” Charlie Brown thinks in this night’s bout of anxious reflection. He’s stressed out and can’t sleep, but at least in this case he’s attempting to use the time constructively. Attempting being the key word. Because the voice in the darkness is not very encouraging about the possibility.
All these rain-centered Peanuts comic strips differ in how each character handles the rain, but one thing is for sure: they are never boring.
“Sure,” the voice says, “make a lot of paperwork for the rest of us.” It’s an example of Peanuts’ ability to be playfully absurd. Who are “we” in this case? The rest of the world? Angels? What “paperwork” is there? Like Charlie Brown’s deepest existential musings, there are no real answers to these questions. It’s just his anxiety psyching him out.
“Why me?” Charlie Brown asks here. It’s a simple question. Desperate even. And that gives it a profound relatability, which was always one of Peanuts’ key strengths. Just about everyone has asked themselves “why me?” at one point or another. When the going got tough for them, and it seemed like the entire universe was against them.
Once again, Charlie Brown gets an answer, but it’s not going to ease his troubles. “Nothing personal,” the voice in the dark says, “your name just happened to come up.” From the subtle change on Charlie Brown’s face from one panel to the next, it’s clear this exchange made him feel way, way worse.
In this *Peanuts *strip, Charlie Brown does some anxious arithmetic. He’s under the covers, staring up at the dark ceiling above him, “thinking about all the dumb things [he does] every day.” He proceeds to calculate that this adds up to approximately three hundred thousand “dumb things” in total “if [he] live[s] to be eighty.”
Or, more accurately, 290k, but as Chuck says in the final frame, “when you add up all the dumb things you do, it’s best to use round figures.” Yet knowing the extent of Charlie Brown’s insomnia, it’s fair to assume that he’ll have plenty of time to figure out the exact figure, down to the very number.
“I’ll go to sleep soon,” Charlie Brown promises himself here. But first, he “just [has] to think every single thought real quick.” It’s Peanuts’ most uproariously on-point depiction of late-night anxiety. That feeling when a person is supposed to be winding down, but instead their mind cranks up to the most active it’s been all day.
At times like this, it can really feel like “every single thought” is racing through one’s head. With his adrenaline spiking, and his anxiety surging, Charlie Brown is prepared to suffer until, if he’s lucky, the deluge of thoughts make him black out and actually get some sleep. This panel is the peak of Peanuts’ insomniac humor, and it’s one of ***Charlie Brown’s ***single best quotes.
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The Snoopy Show, Peanuts by Schulz
Christopher Shea, Kathy Steinberg, Bill Melendez, Sally Dryer, Peter Robbins, Noah Schnapp, Hadley Belle Miller, Mariel Sheets, Lisa DeFaria, Venus Omega Schultheis
The Peanuts Movie, A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown’s All Stars!, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown
Character(s)
Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy van Pelt, Linus van Pelt, Sally Brown, Pig-Pen, Marcie (Peanuts), Peppermint Patty, Woodstock