Peanuts, Charles Schulz’s cartoon, probed the human condition

“IN ALL of mankind’s history, there has never been more damage done than by people who ‘thought they were doing the right thing’.” So says Lucy after her friend, Charlie Brown, reveals that he has replaced her little brother Linus’s much-nuzzled security blanket. It’s a remark that captures the spirit of “Peanuts”, Charles Schulz’s long-running cartoon strip, in which children, free from adult intervention, confront uncomfortable truths.

“Peanuts” celebrates the pleasures of friendship, but also registers the pain of unrequited love and the gulf between fantasy and reality. Each instalment, drawn with crisp simplicity, provides a brief lesson in the elusive nature of happiness. With their large heads and tiny torsos, the characters look vulnerable, and though the setting may be wholesomely suburban, the tone is mostly downbeat.

Schulz, born 100 years ago this month (November), could trace the bleakness of his worldview to a dour childhood in St Paul, Minnesota. His family considered his endless doodling dim-witted at best and degenerate at worst. His first steps as a commercial artist were halted by the Second World War. When he returned from serving in Germany he began a strip called “Li’l Folks”, a perceptive portrait of antagonism between girls and boys.