I wonder where Calvin is now, and
what happened to Hobbes. For ten years,
every fall, he returned to 1st grade
and remained six. It seems at least possible
that he's still doing that. Or maybe he grew
into a hulking, surly teenager, as he'd
threatened to? Hobbes - faded, dirty,
an arm off, stuffing out along the abdomen
- forgotten in a closet, but never
ever thrown out. Appearing
time to time in dreams, perhaps.
An actual tiger, with not a lot
to say.
7 comments:
What if Calvin becomes a hulking, surly six-year-old who is surly because he realizes that he never ages? OK, maybe a six-year-old wouldn't be hulking, but he'd at least have the surly part.
In all seriousness, nice poem. It's a reminder that somewhere deep in our minds we are still who we once were.
I feel like part of all such characters' lives is a serene unawareness of the time loop that imprisons them. They have fresh memories of having continuously aged to that point in their lives, and an expectation of aging into the future, but are unconscious of the fact that their life has become a rolling continuum of yesterday, today and tomorrow, through which the same year keeps unspooling bringing different events and challenges but no forward progress into maturity.
For a character like Calvin, I'm pretty sure that'd be an optimum existence. His parents are probably just lucky they don't notice.
It raises the question about what happens when a fictional character realizes they are bound by fictional constraints. Perhaps those constraints include being stuck at the same age, and I agree with you that such a thing is probably an optimum existence for someone like Calvin, but what if there is some part of him that wants to grow up?
Maybe this is my brain's way of trying to get me to go back and reread the Thursday Next series. :)
I suspect that for any competent and not-taking-the-piss author, it will be impossible for anyone in-universe to realize anything outside their reality. Such would not be realization, but delusion.
Maybe Calvin wakes up one day in a sort of ontological crisis and thinks he is fictional. He starts questioning the meaning of existence and if any of it is real or just a figment of some cartoonist's imagination. His parents would be dismissive of his ranting, long ago having left behind the ability to imagine such possibilities. He would start to reason it out with Hobbes and come to the conclusion that such thinking was in fact delusion, but we the reader would know better.
Now I want to write a story based on this premise, but I feel like it has already been done in a variety of ways.
Well sure, a lot of people in real life wake up to such delusive realizations. Or suspicions, or speculations.
And probably without our thinking of it much (or much of it, if we do), most every novel we read, the characters believe or conclude their fictive universe is reality, but we the reader would know better.
I feel like Calvin, though - wildly imaginative as he is - is still the wrong protagonist for any musings requiring deep or significant introspection.
I think you're right about Calvin being the wrong protagonist for this type of thing. I'm just using this poem as a jumping off point to let me mind wander through a subject I love thinking about. Perhaps we should throw Kilgore Trout or one of Jasper Fforde's many characters into this idea. Really we need to create a new character for this scenario. That seems fitting.
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