Explain this to me?
Every once in a while I'll come across a cartoon - more often a single-panel gag than a daily strip - that just makes no sense to me. I don't mean I find it unfunny, rather that its meaning (if any) simply eludes me. The above example, a Charles Schulz Peanuts from October 2nd, 1953, is such a case. The first three panels seem to be a fairly routine set-up for some kind of punchline, or at least an observational pronouncement... but the payoff is not forthcoming. The final panel has Chuck simply walking away, repeating to himself (twice) Lucy's last line, then adding a few words -- fragments, but not quite non sequiturs. What am I missing? Is it a comment about the inherent contradictory absurdity of the words "little tiny mountain"? That doesn't seem like the answer. Charlie Brown himself appears to be groping for meaning, but how can we (or he) arrive at an answer if the nature of the conundrum itself isn't even clearly defined?
More commonly this predicament has vexed me when looking at a gag cartoon -- a single illustration beneath which reads a caption, generally a line or two of text indicating the speech of a character or characters inhabiting the vignette above it. This species of cartoon doesn't necessarily have to be funny (like a "joke" ha-ha), or even crisply illuminate a corner of life -- mere recognition of human nature or the world we live in is generally success enough. And certainly some cartoonists of this ilk are adept at just that: gentle cognizance suffices where a trenchant wit might be too heavy handed or obvious. Jean-Jacques Sempe comes to mind. Still, there have been many instances where I'll look at a cartoon - often one without a caption - in, say, The New Yorker, and puzzle over the carefully rendered picture, wonder if I should laugh or nod knowingly... and then set it aside, confused and frustrated. Charles Addams, easily my favorite gag cartoonist, has this effect on me more than I'd like to admit. And yet, these mysterious (or obtuse?) cartoons tend to be the most compelling -- I return to them, sometimes years later, actually deflated if their meanings have been made clear through time's experience or mind's unconscious machinations.
Please understand that I'm not writing this as a sort of post-modern deconstructive "analysis" of humor, a la Mark Newgarden (whom I love). I really, honestly don't "get" the Peanuts strip up there, and I wonder if anyone could explain it to me? And I wonder, then, if I'll find it as interesting?