“Snoopy’s whole personality is a little bittersweet. But he’s a very strong character. He can win or lose, be a disaster, a hero, or anything, and yet it all works out. I like the fact that when he’s in real trouble, he can retreat into a fantasy and thereby escape.”-Charles M Schultz
I am going to say from the off that Snoopy is the greatest comic character of all time.
Snoopy was born at the Daisy Hill puppy farm and has seven siblings, Spike, Belle, Marbles, Olaf, Andy, Molly and Rover.
While he started off as a regular looking dog (a Beagle) he got more humanistic as the years went by. He is the observer of the children that rotate in Charlie Brown's orbit. Charlie Brown being Snoopy's nominal owner.
His enduring appeal is that, while he is far wiser than the children with whom he shares the page, when confronted by life's absurdities he is able to retreat into a fantasy world where many of us would like to live and in which he has several aliases, Including Joe Cool, The Word War I Flying Ace, The Famous Author, an Attorney, An Ice Hockey Player and an Olympic figure skater.
Snoopy's most loyal of friends is a bird called Woodstock who is something of a Sancho Panza figure to Snoopy's Don Quixote They share a common language which is indecipherable to to the children but not to us, the reader. This makes us their confidantes
Why is Snoopy so popular? Hard to say, but he has entered our consciousness and, after 75 years is the world's most famous dog. Like all the greats he is recognisable by one name and his image is instanty recognisable.
For many he is seen as that cute dog, which he is, but he is also a multi layered character that is familiar to everyone even those who have never read one of Charles M Schultz's wonderful 'Peanuts' comic strips that spanned 1950-2000 and was read by 35,000000 people. Charlie Brown may be the lead character of 'Peanuts' but Snoopy is the star
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having said that;