Book Review: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: The Making of a Television Classic by Lee Mendelson, Bill Melendez, and Charles M. Schulz - Page 2

Lucy brandishes a butcher knife and impales the unfortunate vegetable savagely - Linus recoils in horror. A novel's worth of relationship between the pair is conveyed wordlessly in a few perfect animated moments before the credits even roll.

Linus and Lucy each then trouble poor Charlie Brown: Linus without malice aforethought by jumping onto his just-raked pile of leaves; Lucy with elaborate premeditation, inducing him to kick the phantom football one more time via the ruse of a "signed document," which, she informs him ex post facto as he lies flat on his back, wasn't notarized.

We shift to Linus — the spiritual and moral center of the Peanuts milieu, recall his nativity speech in the Christmas special — writing a letter to the Great Pumpkin, informing said Halloween apparition of his devotion and intention to wait patiently in the sacred patch, once again, for the Pumpkin's heretofore elusive affirmation in the form of gifts, or at least a visible manifestation.

Here is Faith — the vulnerable declaration of what we believe will be if we only commit fully and sincerely enough — at its most archetypal and poignant.

To his surprise and joy, Charlie Brown is invited, apparently accidentally, to the gang's Halloween party. After they trick or treat — Charlie's dignity is assaulted door after door as each of his companions squeal with confection-gifted glee and he sighs, "I got a rock" — and gather for the evening's gala, Linus and his alternately dubious and fiercely protective paramour Sally await the Great Pumpkin's arrival.

However, these two young believers are NOT rewarded — to Schultz's eternal credit, for such faith is almost never unambiguously confirmed in this world — and Sally wrathfully abandons Linus to his delusions and the cold, viney earth.

A beautiful, humanizing touch has Lucy awakening to an alarm in the middle of the night, trudging out to her brother's patch of sorrow, leading him without recrimination back to the welcoming warmth of home and hearth, and tucking him gently into bed, every inch the loving Big Sister.

This is not a world of 2-D stereotypes, but a small corner of living, breathing humanity rendered with genius, and that is why we cling to it so, even now.

Article Author: Eric Olsen

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