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Plot

1. Expostion: Traditionally, plot begins with exposition: establishing setting, character, etc. We rely on exposition at the beginning of and throughout the narrative to give us a context. Because comics are episodic, Calvin and Hobbes doesnt require much exposition. We already know the story. However, we can still Bind elements of exposition in the frames above. In the Birst frame, the presence of a chalkboard gives us location, a school (presumably elementary). That Calvin immediately announces that its show and tell day

in his classroom, gives us a time. A close reading of the text, then, must acknowledge what the time and place mean to the audience. I hated show and tell, but others seemed to love it. They got to show off whatever gadget or toy their parents had bought them. I didnt have sufBicient ego to compete, so I detested show and tell day. From the teachers perspective, all this showing and telling doesnt actually reveal the toy in question so much as it reveals the person making the presentation. We get to learn about one another. Its deBlating to an ego to intuit that predicament and know that his or her toy, and therefore himself, doesnt quite measure up to the others. Show and tell, then, is a community-building endeavor, even if your own show and tell didnt entail the same negative community as my own. School, readily enough, represents authority, especially in Calvins world. Whatever the teachers ask, he must do. School also represents a threat to the imagination. It applies a strict discipline, assigning the right way to do things, including when we may use the restroom and relieve ourselves.

2. Rising Action: A setting doesnt do us much good without conBlict: a struggle between opposing forces, whether those forces be two people, a person and a society, a person and nature, etc. We call the escalating tension, created by conBlict, or a progression of conBlicts, the rising action. Calvin hates being told what to do and how to do it. His imagination perpetually rebels. In this instance, Calvin is our protagonist, our hero, if you like. Our sympathies lie with him. The antagonist, the person or institution opposed to our hero, is, of course the school system. Calvin doesnt want to share. He wants something to remain secret while the school insists that he show us and tell us everything. The conBlict then is not merely between Calvin and his teacher. It is between secrecy and revelation, between the imagination and the protocol (hes upset that no one accepts the new).

3. Climax: also known as a turning point, the climax is the point of highest dramatic tension in a narrative, the point at which the conBlict reaches critical mass and resolution begins. In frame one, we have the situation, that its show and tell. In frame two, Calvin announces the conBlict. His audience wishes to know his secret, but hell never tell. In frame three, we have our climax. His mouth open wide for maniacal laughter, his outstretched arms and upright posture deBiantly occupy the entire frame. He announces his dominance: Ill carry my secret to the grave. To over-generalize and reductive, plots follow two courses, comedy or tragedy.

In a comedy, we reach a happy conclusion, often with amusing consequences. In tragedy, the resolution is an unhappy one. Genre (the kind of story we are reading) isnt always so obvious as a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. But if we hadnt known before, the climax of the story certainly announces the genre here. He deBiance is too great, too stylized and too concerned with the seemingly trivial (hes waging a war against show and tell, after all). Here, his deBiance reaches its apex, followed by its defeat.

4. Falling Action: otherwise knows as denouement (literally, an unraveling), the falling action is that part of the plot in which the conBlicts of the rising action become untangled. Unfortunately, in my example, the denouement occurs simultaneous to the resolution, so lets imagine a supplementary frame, then, between frames three and four, in which the teacher grows frustrated with Calvin and tells him that he must do things the correct way or else visit the principals ofBice. In that scenario, the plot turns (remember, the climax is also the turning point). His victory reveals his demise, and the conBlict eases.

5. Resolution: basically, the outcome of the narrative. Resolutions can be satisfying, unsatisfying, or ambiguous. Our resolution here, is a satisfying one from the point of view of genre (comedy). Sent to the principals ofBice Binishes the plot. DeBiance has been punished. Comically, that punishment undercuts the self-importance of Calvins insistence that he has paradoxically given his class the greatest show and tell ever by neither showing nor telling. The resolution is also ironic (irony being a situation in which what we expect is the opposite of the reality). In this case, Calvin expects the appreciation of his genius. In reality, he seems a fool.

Imagery

Imagery is, basically, the employment of detail or the use of language (or, in this case, language or graphics) to create meaning (themes, philosophical ideas, etc.)

1. Well begin this strip with parody, aka imitating another discourse with comic effect. In this case, the strip parodies analysis of art, the kind made by sculptors, painters, or writers, to justify their project. Calvin is taking advantage of his mediums impermanence in order to represent the horror of our own mortality, mocking the perceived pomposity of artists. 2. While perhaps the Birst strip, in which Calvin asserts his deBiance against show and tell, best illustrates hyperbole, or an exaggeration, this strip offers a subtler variation. The exaggerated language, This sculpture is about transience [] the evanescence of life, makes the parody effective. 3. Ironically, that hyperbole actually helps us to deBine symbol. The snowman isnt just a snowman. It signiBies itself (snowman qua snowman) as well as an abstract idea implicit in its concrete representation. Here, the snowman is death. 4. The reaction of the audience also gives occasion for us to understand allusion. The audience criticizes Calvin, to which Hobbes responds, A Philistine on the sidewalk. Though its a common usage of the term, so perhaps not strictly an allusion, the term means someone ignorant who undervalues art while referring to the biblical and historical philistines. That is, Hobbes alludes to another work or to history. Heck, even the character names are allusions: John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. 5. The conBlict between Calvin and his audience gives us our last term. Any recurrent device or pattern is a motif, in this case the continual dismissal of Calvins genius (refer back to the Binal frame of the previous strip).

Some Common Patterns

Actually, youre as much an expert on this as I am, if a little less practiced in thinking this way. We share a common culture, and therefore a common knowledge, one you can mostly rely on even when reading literature from other centuries, written within a separate cultural context, or in some other language. Investigate what you know, even if you dont yet consciously know it.

Its not just a swing: Yes, were revisiting symbolism. Looking up at Calvin on his swing set, I can easily make the argument that the swing is a lot more than just a swing. It represents a rather broad set of ideas. Most obvious is possession of a cherished object. The bully wants what Calvin has. The swing also represents the innocence of youth, when such moral edicts as wait your turn, still have meaning for usand when was the last time any of us felt we had a turn and that it would, eventually come to us? When the Bully takes it by force, Calvin learns the sad reality of his youth, that simple morality seldom beneBits us. As with much of Calvin and Hobbes, the comedy comes by way of tragedy. It really shouldnt be funny that innocence has died, but it is.

And dont just stop with swings. If you see a doll, discarded in the corner, thats lost youth. If you see dolls kept immaculately and in great number, each with names and histories, someone perhaps is attempting to hold on to their youth. Childhood objects, obviously enough, indicate childhood innocence. How those objects are treated tells us something about the state of that innocence.

Bad Guys always wear black, especially when theyre Good: Color makes a difference. Take a quick look back up at the cartoon. The bullys shirt is black. Yes, I know, its a monochrome strip and the artist didnt have a lot of options. Still dark hair, dark shirt thats a bad guy.

In Miltons Paradise Lost, the image of Satan leaving hell is described, And out of the Bire, not light, but darkness visible. In the darkness lies mystery. People dont like mystery. We like to know. We sneak peaks at Christmas presents. We chastise Calvin for not showing or telling Bad things happen in the dark. Monsters lurk. Light, on the other hand, is good. It represents knowledge.

But what happens when the hero wears black, violates the social contract, indulges, excessively in his/her own passions. Well, we call that the Byronic Hero. Take Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, for example. In the Birst ten minutes of that Bilm, he commits rape and shoots a man in the back. Hes wearing black. And hes the good guy.

The lesson here is to pay attention to color. Green usually means either Spring or jealousy. Red is usually passion or violence. Blue is usually innocent (think the Virgin Mary). White is innocence. Black is death. Again, all that is true until its not. Sometimes the good guys wear black. Sometimes innocent white is ironic innocence. Sometimes its just the color of something.

Questing: If someone takes a trip somewhere, theyre probably on a quest. We dont need to get all Joseph Campbell about this, and I really think people should avoid that sort of thing, but quests are an important theme in literature. When the Redcross Knight sets forth

in Spencers The Faerie Queene, its a quest. When Galahad sets out to Bind the Grail, a quest. When Luke leaves Tatooine When Dorothy skips on down the yellow brick road Quests usually follow a pattern: young person leaves home (read, innocence) in search of some object or to achieve some end that will bring back some state of lost grace. Heroes leave, conquer the bad guy, come home, make everything better. Along the way we learn a valuable lesson, just like The Cosby Show.

Bless the irony of Calvin and Hobbes. First, theres the obvious joke, super hero Calvin cant even get out of the closet. Ha. Ha. LMAO, right? But wait, thats all you saw? Come on now, did you miss the name? Captain Napalm. You just cannot escape the allusion to Vietnam. And if you did escape it, here I am, taking you by your ear, dragging you back to the scene of the crime. The heros name is Captain Napalm and hes Protector of the American Way. And this great American protector cant even get himself out of the closet.

Even Spongebob Squarepants is Political: Ive already clued you in to the politics of our Captain Napalm episode, but we need to recognize the pattern therein. Its all political, even when its not. Writers do not write in a void. Writers, like their characters, have a context. Writers, as mentioned much earlier, allude to other texts (here, the text alludes to the superhero genre maybe that grin is an allusion to the Joker?). So, writers read other books. They also live in a world in which the politics are important. Even for non-political writers, politics is a shaping force, just as politics shapes you, even if you dont vote or watch CNN or have the Birst clue what currency manipulation is and how it affects the global market.

I think the above comic is about as overt a critique of America as Blood Diamond is about capitalism and the lies told, the blood spilt, in its name. It doesnt have to be that way, however. Watch Its a Wonderful Life. Its just as much a critique of capitalism as Blood Diamond is. Read The Wizard of Oz and you can feel the tension between poverty and progress. Pay attention to the cultural context in which a story was written. It just wouldnt do to read, say, James Joyces The Dead, and miss out all the military references and the tense relationship between Ireland and England (the Easter Uprising was only 9 years away).

Even Spongebob Squarepants is Sexual: Thats right. I said it. Dont look at me that way. It needed to be said. You know it. I know it. I dont want to get dirty here, but sexuality, gender, romance, love procreation, are just as important to literature as they are to life. Sex, at its most biological level, is a means of staving off death. Our genes live on. Our name lives on. Our property lives on (oooh sex is getting political now). Sexual reproduction renews just as Springtime renews.

Sex is also terribly complicated (as if property rights, the inBliction of our own issues and fears onto our children, and fear of our own death werent complicated enough). Who do we like? How can we like them? As When Harry Met Sally would put it: can men and women be friends or to be more political correct, can lovers be friends?

I could get Freudian on you and talk about what it means when King Kong scales the Empire State Building, or what it means when, in a Noire Bilm, the femme fatale reaches into her purse, or what it means when you dream of falling down stairs, but I wont. Looking at Calvin and Hobbeswe see clearly enough the problem of sexuality, the power play between genders and the ironic foreshadowing of Calvins downfall.

Eating with someone is Communion. Eating someone is gross: Remember the last supper? It comes near the end of a few versions of a rather famous story. Well, eating with people is a form of community. (communioncommunity) Other than killing someone, and well, the other obvious choice, there is nothing more intimate and potentially embarrassing than eating with another human being. Thats why its the classic Birst date. Romance is built on it. Its also why politicians continually refer to the halcyon days of yore when families ate with one another. The family dinner is the symbol of community and wellness.

So what does it mean when you dont eat with one another? Did you notice in our comic that theyre carrying lunch pails?

Writing Analysis

Some Formalities: 1) In a novel, story, or narrative poem, we have a narrator. In a lyric poem, we have a speaker. Never confuse the narrator or the speaker with the author, even if its clearly the author (biography excepted). 2) Fiction, poetry, non-Biction, Bilm, comic strips, etc., all take place in the perpetual present. The present tense should be the default tense of your essay. So, it would be, Calvin shouts at his classmates [] or In Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Waterson creates a world in which comedy underscores tragedy. 3) Be precise. Be concrete. Offer evidence (that is, some direct references to the text, including some direct quotes). So, dont make some vague reference: Calvin likes to get into mischief which shows his rebellious side. Give evidence, When Calvin shouts, Ill carry my secret to the grave, his rambunctious behavior exceeds [.]. 4) Summary is from the devil. Assume your audience has read the text in question. Dont just summarize the prose or the poetry. You need to interpret it. Writing a book report for me is a quick way to a low-ish C.

5) Oh, and a pet peeve of mine these writers arent your friends. Dont refer to them by their Birst name. (I even read, once, a student refer to Shakespeare as Bill.)

Conception and Execution:

1) Its a really good idea to begin with a question, especially if you dont know the answer. Why does Watterson make comic the tragedy of lost innocence and the crushing of imagination? If you can answer the question, youve got yourself a thesis. 2) Okay, youre stuck. How to get a question? Well, pick a topic. What features stand out to you? Is it a symbol? A Character? Take the small thing you notice and apply it to something larger, like theme. If you notice that, in A Christmas Carol, that money images are linked with darkness and poverty with light, well, then, perhaps youve caught on to Charles Dickens saying something about the industrial age in Victorian England. Stranger things have happened. 3) Say something different in every paragraph. Your thesis shouldnt be Rebelliousness is a theme in Calvin and Hobbes. If you write that, your topic paragraphs will wind up nothing more than examples of rebelliousness. A thesis is the big picture. In order for it to be true, we must understand the little things that make it work. Topic paragraphs should be those smaller parts. 4) If youre writing about a character, write about only ONE, and you might want to avoid the protagonist. You only have a few pages to work with. Remember, youre now the teacher. Youve discovered something about the text and you want to teach it to us. Whatever youve discovered, teaching it to us will make us understand the entire text differently. Analysis means breaking something bigger into smaller parts and then identifying a pattern in the interplay of the smaller parts. You are not just telling us about the smaller bits, youre interpreting them.

SAMPLEW: I like my Foucauldian reading of Calvins show and tell that never was. The setting gives us a situation in which the individual is pitted against an institution cruelly bent on revealing the depths of that individual, thereby comfortably assimilating that individual into the whole. Like eating a meal together, show and tell is a communal act, in which we all participate in a larger identity. Calvin resists, protecting his individuality and, thereby, the sanctity of the secret. Despite being a comedy, the strip actually makes comedy of a universal, tragic theme, the disappearance of the individual psyche.

Glossary of Terms

Literary Terms

alliteration the repetition of initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words for example, "While I nodded, nearly napping" in Edgar Allan Poes "The Raven."

allusion a referencewhether explicit or implicit, to history, the Bible, myth, literature, painting, music, and so onthat suggests the meaning or generalized implication of details in the story, poem, or play.

ambiguity the use of a word or expression to mean more than one thing.

antagonist a neutral term for a character who opposes the leading male or female character.

centered (central) consciousness a limited third-person point of view, one tied to a single character throughout the story; this character often reveals his or her inner thoughts but is unable to read the thoughts of others.

climax also called the turning point, the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing.

conTlict a struggle between opposing forces, such as between two people, between a person and something in nature or society, or even between two drives, impulses, or parts of the self.

exposition that part of the structure that sets the scene, introduces and identiBies characters, and establishes the situation at the beginning of a story or play. Additional exposition is often scattered throughout the work.

falling action (denouement) the fourth part of plot structure, in which the complications of the rising action are untangled.

foil one character that serves as a contrast to another.

hyperbole overstatement characterized by exaggerated language.

imagery broadly deBined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of Bigurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object.

irony a situation or statement characterized by a signiBicant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant.

metaphor (1) one thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them; (2) an implicit comparison or identiBication of one thing with another unlike itself without the use of a verbal signal. Sometimes used as a general term for a Bigure of speech. meter the more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. This is determined by the kind of "foot (iambic or dactylic, for example) and by the number of feet per line (Bive feet = pentameter, six feet = hexameter, for example).

motif a recurrent device, formula, or situation that deliberately connects a poem with common patterns of existing thought.

parody a work that imitates another work for comic effect by exaggerating the style and changing the content of the original.

protagonist the main character in a work, who may be male or female, heroic or not heroic

rising action the second of the Bive parts of plot structure, in which events complicate the situation that existed at the beginning of a work, intensifying the conBlict or introducing new conBlict.

satire a literary work that holds up human failings to ridicule and censure.

symbol a person, place, thing, event, or pattern in a literary work that designates itself and at the same time Biguratively represents or "stands for" something else. Often the thing or idea represented is more abstract, general, non-or superrational; the symbol, more concrete and particular.

theme (1) a generalized, abstract paraphrase of the inferred central or dominant idea or concern of a work; (2) the statement a poem makes about its subject.

unreliable narrator a speaker or voice whose vision or version of the details of a story are consciously or unconsciously deceiving; such a narrators version is usually subtly undermined by details in the story or the readers general knowledge of facts outside the story. If, for example, the narrator were to tell you that Columbus was Spanish and that he discovered America in the fourteenth century when his ship the Golden Hind landed on the coast of Florida near present-day Gainesville, you might not trust other things he tells you.