Calvin and Hobbes: An Existentialist View

Calvin and Hobbes: An Existentialist View

Faster and faster, the slick red wagon slaloms across the rocky terrain, carrying a blonde-headed boy and his stuffed tiger along each turn of the track. Calvin, an imaginative six year old who makes us laugh with his childish antics, and Hobbes, the philosophical stuffed tiger, both make a statement about the world they were created in. Calvin and Hobbes is essentially an existentialist comic strip. Through Calvin’s desperate and unique choices and circumstances, he untraditionally fights against a continually changing world. His actions portray the disorder in which we are all controlled in a meaningless existence against a ferocious society, a ruthless nature, and inevitable death.

Calvin is a unique character who breaks the traditionally accepted roles children play. John Calvin, the namesake of Bill Waterson’s star, was a stern, protestant theologian. Torn between conflicting doctrines of the Catholic Church, John Calvin led a Protestant reformation, breaking away from the traditionally accepted beliefs to more unorthodox beliefs such as predestination and justification by faith alone. No character could better reflect these Protestant views than the six-year old Calvin. An entirely mischievous and self-indulgent boy, Calvin is also forced into making new and desperate choices. John Calvin was forced into making a desperate choice to rebel against the mother church, facing excommunication because he chose not to believe in the widely accepted beliefs of the time. Calvin also protests the situations he encounters. He polls his father, rating him on his character and past performances. Calvin realizes that it is not issues and ideologies that matter, but the type of people we a...

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...tanding why. Yet, Calvin is able to allay those fears. He is a Peter Pan, a perpetual youth who we can look back on and admire throughout time, because he never has to face age. As he continues to rebel and persist against an existential world in his sarcastic and sardonic ways despite his circumstances and consequences, he sets an example of how to fight the irrational attacks on the individual.

Works Cited

May, Rollo. Existential Psychology. New York: Random House, 1961.

Official Website for Calvin and Hobbes comics from 1985 to 1996 by Bill Watterson, the. <http://www.CalvinandHobbes.com> October 15, 2000.

Watterson, Bill. The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1995.

Wilson, James Q. “Calvin and Hobbes and the Moral Sense: A Farewell.” <http://calvinandhobbes.com/html/farewell.html> October 15, 200