“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”
While the other kids are showing off their costumes and trick-or-treating for candy, Linus sits in the pumpkin patch and tacitly teaches us about hope, self-doubt, and humility.
Every year, Linus waits for the Great Pumpkin… and every year, Linus is disappointed. Yet he persists: he tries to sustain the wavering hope that this year something transcendent will visit him, will validate his years of sacrifice and trust.
Linus: Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to! I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.
Linus is the Fox Mulder of the Peanuts gang: he wants to believe. I love you, Linus, even though you’re the sad puppet of a fundamentalist gourd-based religious faction.
