In the following posts, you will see analysis of a well known comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” as well as an analysis of the song “Time” by Pink Floyd. Not only will you see the analysis of them individually, but you will also see how they tie into one another, despite them being two completely different media forms. Enjoy 🙂

Link to original song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwYX52BP2Sk
Link to solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki1PlbzTdCg&feature=youtu.be

The Dark Side of the Moon: One of the most successful and influential albums in music history by the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. Featured on the album is a famous song by the group: Time. An extensive intro section followed by a blues, synth driven verse leads into the guitar solo which is then followed by another verse is the unique outlook to the song. Besides the excellent musicianship the song contains, another particularly interesting aspect about the song is its extremely deep, existential lyrics.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again

The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way

The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say

While actually playing the solo to this song myself (see link if you’re so inclined), I realized there are some extremely philosophical ideas at play here, whether or not Roger Waters (the bass player and main lyricist for Floyd) realized it, in relation to some of the theories discussed in the class.

The first idea that came to mind was the story of the traveller. Tolstoy creates a horribly pessimistic metaphor for life in that a traveller has fallen in a pit in which he is hanging on by a small branch. At the bottom of the pit lies a huge dragon awaiting his tasty meal to fall. The branch’s roots are also being nibbled away by two mice of white and black fur. There is also honey dripping from the branch the traveller can reach and get. The symbolism is this: the dragon is representing death, the mice the passing of time (night and day), and the honey is merely the few short pleasures which can distract us from death itself. “Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day” and “fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way” seem to play right in line with a sad view of life such as the one Tolstoy describes. A view that humans just waste time in silent agony awaiting the death that is most certainly coming to us all-a view in which every day just brings us “one day closer to death.”

A second idea the song relates to is Nagel’s concept of absurdity. Nagel defines our lives to be absurd because there is a distinct discrepancy between our claim to significance and what the universe actually tells us. Or in other terms, we go about our lives thinking it is significant but because you can zoom out far away in reference to the universe, this means we are but a pointless speck on a small planet who really has no meaning whatsoever. This idea is present in Time. One of Floyd’s most famous lyrics ever is “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” and this relates directly to an absurd life. It hints at the feeling that many people may have, whether conscious about it or not, that we are all just grasping for meaning. We try and find some way to cope with the desperate feeling of meaninglessness by just trying to fool ourselves that we are meaningful or just accepting that we are indeed lacking meaning in the universal scale. This is too what Camus thought. He thought that either we would commit suicide (either literally or philosophically-ie religion) or we would have to accept that the universe is silent and continue to search for a meaning to life. I do believe these fears are what the lyrics to time are playing at. Our fear of death and meaninglessness and that we simply don’t have enough time to find a way over it: “Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time…”

Despite these incredibly deep and depressing lyrics (but also just plain incredible), there is still hope to be had! The only hint at some of the more pessimistic theories about the meaning of life. If you wish to end on a positive note, do some further research on the work of Susan Wolfe and her description on successful projects or Todd May’s work on narrative values. They give great ideas on we, humans on earth, despite our insignificance to the universe and the universe’s silence, can still live very good (yes, objectively and subjectively) and meaningful lives!

In the popular comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” by Bill Watterson, a young boy named Calvin makes various observations about childhood and life in general. He is joined in this journey by his imaginary tiger friend Hobbes. The characters, named after philosophers John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes, provide various insights into the meaning of life on many occasions. Let’s take this strip for example:

*Clearer image at: http://selective-reality.tumblr.com/post/10440479358/im-significant-screamed-the-dust-speck

The comic strip provides a look into the human condition and the desire for meaning contrasted against a vast, unanswering universe. This closely resembles Camus’s description of the absurdity of the universe. Calvin is seen calling out to the universe, a notion that could stand for humankind’s search for meaning. The universe however, does not answer. This causes a crisis for Calvin, as Camus stated it would for many people, as he now compares himself to a meaningless speck of dust.

*Clearer image at: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/71424344060015795/

The strip above can be used to describe Schopenhauer’s views on death and how it undermines the meaning of one’s life. What is interesting about the strip is that Schopenhauer believes that in our early years we are usually about life and are like children before a curtain is raised in a play, but it appears Calvin has already thought about the meaning of his life in this manner. Perhaps he has thought of how the pain of life outweighs the pleasure like Schopenhauer argues, and explains life’s bleakness to Hobbes by referring to the “big picture” or the inevitable death of everything, as we discussed in class. Perhaps Calvin can find meaning elsewhere.

This Calvin and Hobbes comic is drawing ties to Nagel’s theory of the absurd. His theory says that we all take life seriously but when we take a step back, we realize how insignificant it is. By stepping back, you are reminded that the universe will eventually end leaving it to question whether your life or life in general is meaningful. Despite this overwhelming feeling from stepping back, we just go on with life and still take it seriously.

*Clearer image at: https://taykish.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/calvin-hobbes/

Here it can be seen that Calvin uses death as a motivation for life. This parallels Bernard Williams’s thesis about the Makropulos Case. In the Makropulos Case, a woman who has had an extended existence is seen to be living a life of boredom, apathy, and emptiness. Calvin seems to argue that an unlimited existence allows you to put off your pleasures or goals in life, therefore death provides a sort of deadline to which you must take action or “live in the moment”. Hobbes seems to disagree with this however. Perhaps he chooses to “look down the road” of extended existence because he agrees with Rosati that extended life can be appealing because it allows for unlimited choices with limited regret of those choices.

*Clearer image at: http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/news/127800-after-getting-taste-of-limelight-bill-watterson-cant-stop-producing-new-work.html

It appears in this strip that Calvin is looking towards happiness as a source of meaning in his life. According to May, it makes sense that he would do that because happiness seems to be easier to understand and obtain than a concrete sense of meaning. It appears that Calvin does not agree with Bentham that happiness is seeking pleasure and avoiding pain however. To Calvin, happiness is having a lot of money. It appears his views of happiness more closely align with Julia Annas’s, as he sees it as something you can achieve or earn. He however, would choose to use the money to indulge, seek pleasure, and even crush others. Susan Wolf would say that these traits would not make his life meaningful. Even though it appears he is successful, he is not actively engaged in a project and that project most definitely does not have any positive value associated with it. It also relates to May’s point that evil tasks actually detract from the meaning of one’s life. Perhaps Calvin should donate the money to charity, a task which is viewed as good.

*Clearer image at: http://chquotes.synthasite.com/candhstrips.php

This Calvin and Hobbes comic alludes to subjectivity in life. Todd May brings about the idea of narrative values as an overarching theme in peoples’ lives. Both Calvin and Hobbes in this comic are living intensely, however it suggests that the narrative values about their life are subjective. Calvin prefers the intensity and actually would like more in his life while Hobbes’s idea of intensity has reached a maximum and he would prefer to tone it down.

Music and comic strips are two things that most people have encountered starting from a young age and still encounter on a regular basis as one gets older. More often then not the interactions between the listener of a song or the reader of a comic strip does so out of pleasure and occasionally a verse in the song or a panel in the comic strip will strike a nerve of curiosity and you begin to look for deeper meanings within them. Sometimes you will find a comic strip such as “Calvin and Hobbes” and a song such as “Time” from Pink Floyd two completely different forms of media, created by different people with different backgrounds and experiences, will have similar themes even though at first glance one would easily thing that the two have nothing in common.

“Calvin and Hobbes” and “Time” both have themes coercing through them that intertwine them together from Thomas Nagel’s theory of the absurd to Rosati’s theory about the Makropulos case (despite it not being mentioned in the analysis). Rosati’s theory from the Makropulus is that an extended existence could be appealing in some ways because it allows more time to do things one may have wanted to do, without dying with as many regrets. The lyric in the “Time” song that triggers an association with this theory is “You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today, And then one day you find ten years have got behind you, No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun..” With this line it seems as if when you are young you have all the time in the world to do something, and then soon you begin to realize that time is fleeting and you don’t have an eternity to do whatever you want, so you have to make your remaining days on earth count.

Though these two media forms, are on two different ends of the spectrum, it is easy to see that they parallel themselves in some ways.