Recurring Motifs in Calvin & Hobbes – Building Character

Turn the clock back. Remember how, as kids, we were asked by our parents to eat one whole bowl of vegetables because it was good for us? Remember how we were told that making the bed would somehow make us a better person? Remember how we were asked to clean the house before festivals? Remember how (my Indian friends would be able to relate to this more) cycling up to the flour mill with an impossibly large load of wheat would make us stronger and better? In summary, according to our parents, all that was good for us used to make us miserable and as a corollary almost everything that made us miserable was somehow good for us.

I used to think that, this phenomenon was restricted only to India until I was introduced to Calvin & Hobbes. One of my favorite characters in the strip is Calvin’s Dad. His quirky habits, such as, getting up at the crack of dawn, even when on a holiday, going for walks and occassionally cycling in a blizzard, insisting on going to wild, ‘itchy’ islands for holidays, giving bizarre, nonsensical answers to Calvin’s questions, make him one of the most endearing characters in Calvin & Hobbes. Well, that is for the readers, not Calvin. Calvin’s Dad always keeps looking for opportunities to build Calvin’s character by asking him to do things that are good for him. And like it is always with children, the things that Dad thinks are good for him, make Calvin miserable.