Lucy, Charlie Brown, Football Part 11: 1999 The End

1999: Close the Gate



43. October 24, 1999 
At the end of Kafka's "Before the Law" the man from the country is dying. He asks the gatekeeper why no one else has ever sought access to the law through this gate.  I picture this scene as the final panel of a football routine. The Man from the Country assumes Charlie Brown's posture. "He can no longer hold up his stiffening body," so he waves for the gatekeeper.  The gatekeeper leans over the dying man; he has to "bend way down to him."  The gatekeeper shouts his punchline, and it is worthy of Lucy. "Here no one else can gain entry, since the entrance was assigned only to you. I'm going now to close it." What the man from the country thought was an access point to the law was really a blockage. I like to think that his final, unrecorded thought is "RATS!" We are never told what the gatekeeper does after he closes the gate, but we can assume that his job is finished. With no one to seek access through this specific gate, both the gate and the gatekeeper have become redundant.

Charlie Brown and Lucy depend on one another. They, and the football, are all integral to the football routine. The final football routine strip knows this. Charles Schulz, though, resists sentimentality, nostalgia, and closure in this final football strip by interjecting Rerun, of all characters, into the routine. Rerun did not make his debut in Peanuts until March 26, 1973 (even though he was born on May 23 1972). Rerun quickly became the third wheel of the Van Pelt family. He looks like a younger version of Linus, but Lucy never establishes the same antagonistic, loving, complex relationship with Rerun that she has with Linus. Anyway, the first two panels of October 24, 1999 offer no hint that this is a football strip, let alone the last football strip. The first panel shows Rerun standing on the steps of his house call out "Lucy!" She must not here him, because in the second panel he is walking through the grass calling out "Lunch time!" In the third panel he wanders into the football routine. We see Rerun on the left; Lucy is in the center, kneeling with the football, while she makes the usual proposition to Charlie Brown, who is standing on the right side of the panel. Rerun speaks, and since his speech bubble seems to be slightly behind Lucy's, he is probably speaking after her. He says "Mom says to come in for lunch." In the next panel, he tells Lucy "She says right now!" Lucy frowns, shuts her eyes, picks up the football and says, "Oh, good grief!" We next see a close up of Charlie Brown. He says, "That's all right . . We'll do it some other time . ." Will this or will this not be a football routine strip? In the next panel, Lucy says something truly astounding. She hands the football to Rerun and says "No, Rerun can take my place . ." Rerun then tees up the football and Charlie Brown begins to walk away from it. He finds confidence in this new situation. "This time I'll kick it . . Rerun will never pull it away . . . He just wouldn't . ." As Charlie Brown begins to run toward the football he says "So here we go!" And then Schulz pulls the football away from readers. The next panel cuts to Lucy at the table, eating her lunch. Rerun approaches, holding the football in front of him. Lucy asks "Did you pull the ball away? Did he kick it? What happened?" Lucy implies that Rerun knows about the football routine, that he knows that he should have pulled the football away. Did he? Rerun gets the punchline in the final panel. He turns away from the table and says "You'll never know . . ." Lucy can only respond with "Aaugh!" The joke seems to be on her, but I hold that it really is not. Even if Rerun did not pull the football away, even if he let Charlie Brown kick it, there would be little significance to the kick. The whole point of the football routine is that it consists of Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the football. Rerun is a red herring. When Lucy is not around, Charlie Brown has kicked and punted numerous footballs. My 10-year old son Max, who fancies himself the Peanuts expert in our house, pointed me to the strip from September 12, 1956. In it, we see Schroeder teeing up a football in the first two panels, while Snoopy looks on in the background. In panel three, we see Charlie Brown following through on a kick with a solid "THUMP." Schroeder is not Lucy. Rerun is not Lucy. Charlie Brown will never kick a football held by Lucy. The gate is closed.