An Ecocritical Look at a Fantastical Tiger

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson was a daily comic strip, that ran from
November 1985, to the end of 1995; it is considered by many to be one of the best
and most influential comic strips of its time (Dear Mr. Watterson, 2013). The comic
strip's main characters were the eponymous Calvin, a rambunctious, imaginative,
socially awkward 6-year-old; and Hobbes, a living, talking, anthropomorphic tiger (or
perhaps, a stuffed toy?).
If, according to Cheryll Glotfelty Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between
literature and the physical environment. (as cited in Dobrin & Kidd, pg. 3), then
"Calvin and Hobbes" can be read as an ecocritical text, since the major focus of the
strip is the relationship between Calvin, which often represents the fabricated, pop-
culture, consumer-obsessed world, and Hobbes, which often represents a more
natural, healthy, and level-headed approach to life. By listening to their conversations
and observing their behavior, we can easily detect Watterson's opinions regarding the
ideal relationship between Boy (or Man) and Nature and Society.
Tuna Sandwich: first encounter
For Hobbes to be a powerful and constructive voice, the comic strip had to rest on
certain foundations, especially considering the cultural weight of the tiger as a wild
animal, and the relationship between Man and Beast, and between Child and Toy.
Hobbes is not created by Calvin, not even implicitly. Margaret Joan Blount sees the
animal-like toy character in a dismissive way, "mere animations of cute toys, added to
the tale as a means of easy access to the faerie realm" while the anthropomorphized
animal is still regarded as the extension of the human, "man's own thoughts, deed and
attributes given external form, projected onto another different creature." (Blount,
Margaret Joan. Animal Land: The Creatures of Children's Fiction. New York: Morrow,
1974, 1975. As quotes in Kuznets, pg. 210). As we will see, it is important for Watterson
to portray Hobbes as an independent character.

From an ecocritical point of view, the choice of tiger as Hobbes' species is pregnant
with meaning: the tiger is a powerful, un-domesticated, man-eating animal; inherently
wild and dangerous. In "The Jungle Book" it is King, in the "Life of Pi" the epitome of
savagery.
Right from the start, Watterson dismantles our expectations of Hobbes as a tiger, and
of his relationship with Calvin as toy or animal. The tiger is caught by the trap, naked
in the woods, but the dainty bite on the sandwich makes him cute, not ferocious or
dangerous. Calvin is wearing a Safari Has, as if he is some British colonial about to step
into the Indian Jungle, yet he brings back not a stuffed trophy but a fabulous friend.
Watterson intentionally dismantles the "predator and prey" dichotomy and makes
sure their relationship is always "a boy and his friend". While the two friends fight and
wrestle, Calvin is never seen as "food", and Hobbes is never seen as "pet".
A Real Live Tiger: Imaginary or Fantastical?
Is Hobbes "imaginary", or merely hidden, like a fantastical creature? That question is
quickly dismissed by Watterson as both unresolved and not important. Others treat
Hobbes as a stuffed toy, yet Calvin never obfuscates his references to Hobbes as a
living, real tiger; they just treat it as another silly imaginary thing Calvin says.
For Watterson, Hobbes must be real so he could voice a distinct voice to Calvin, and
not some "inner", or "primitive" part of Calvin. He made an unusual choice to show
Hobbes with dual natures: when only Calvin and Hobbes are in the strip, Hobbes is
alive: he talks and moves on his own; eats, sleeps, dreams, fights with Calvin, etc.; but
with other characters in the strip, Hobbes is a stuffed toy. This never seems to phase
Calvin. Though other characters would insist that Hobbes is a toy and can't act on his
own, for Calvin, Hobbes is an independent agent, different from himself.
In Children's Literature, when the child interacts with the fantastical, we are always
aware of the mediator, the adult writer, standing between us and the child's
experience; but when we see Calvin runs and plays and schemes with Hobbes, we are
seduces to embrace Calvin's point of view. This allows Watterson to hide his
involvement better, to make Hobbes more immediate to us. In this. Calvin's
experience (and ours) of Hobbes becomes private and special, and allows Watterson
more freedom in expressing his views concerning the indifferent world that ignores
Hobbes as real.
The Wild Boy and the Tame Tiger
The American Bad Boy and the rebellious tomboy are admirable, thanks to time spent
in the great outdoors, away from the civilizing influences of home (Dobrin & Kidd, pg.
6)
Calvin is hyperactive, wildly imaginative; runs around the house, breaking lamps and
making a mess. Outside, he rolls in the dirt, picks up rocks, splashes in pools, and starts
water-baloon fights. He skips school and runs away from the babysitter. He is, we
might say, "wild". Therefore, it is noteworthy that Hobbes is not the instigator or the
motivator of any of this, though he is a willing accomplice to much of it. Hobbes is not
Calvin's "wildness" exemplified or externalized, but as an "other" that readily joins
these behaviors, giving them positive reinforcement by accepting them, and making
them more enjoyable.
His "tigerness", the positive aspect of this tigerhood comes into play when we note
which behaviors Hobbes reinforces in Calvin, and which he doesn't. Calvin breaks the
rules, while Hobbes acknowledges them and chooses which to accept, and which to
rejects. He does not participate when Calvin skips school, nor does he help him pick
on Susie Derkins; he dislikes the unhealthy "sugar bombs" or the Saturday morning
cartoons Calvin binges on. Conversely, he is always happy to participate in make-
believe, in roleplaying, running and playing outside, getting dirty, climbing trees, and
even the dangerous and sometimes polemic sled rides.
In this Watterson is using Hobbes' "otherness" to define an alternative childhood
space, one that is not categorized by being "Bad", meaning assimilating society's rules
by breaking all of them, but categorizing some habits and behaviors as better,
healthier, and perhaps "internal" to Boyhood, while rejecting others as fabricated, and
"external".
The Woods outside the Home
Watterson insisted unlike other artists before him on larger and unbroken space
(Watterson, 2001) that allowed him to create lush, colorful vistas of woods and snowy
hills. He loved the outdoors (Dear Mr. Watterson, 2013) and brings that love to the
comic strip.
Children are still presumed to have a privileged relationship to nature, thanks largely
to the legacy of romantic and Victorian literature, which emphasized often to the
point of absurdity the childs proximity to the natural world and consequent purity.
(Dobrin & Kidd, pg. 6)
Calvin's playing often takes the events of the comic strip "outside". Outside is where
we put Nature, when we decided "Inside" is our homes, our cities, and in that, erected
borders between our society and nature. When Calvin and Hobbes travel outside it
allows Watterson to comment on the beauty of the natural world, and on our impact
on it.
While Calvin loves watching TV and playing inside, and also frequently plays the
"naturalist", exploring the woods, observing bugs in their habitat. We see the force of
the choice to make Calvin's friend a tiger when we note his role in Calvin's
explorations. Outside, Hobbes is more at home, and he often plays the role of "guide"
to Calvin's "explorer", answering questions and taking a more active role.
To some extent, "Calvin and Hobbes" can be seen as what Kamala Platt calls
"environmental justice poetics," texts that are created to promote both
environmental well-bring and social justice" (Dobrin & Kidd, pg. 184) since Hobbes, as
an animal, "carries the responsibility of gently and brilliantly reminding human beings
to respect biological and cultural diversity." (Dobrin & Kidd, 190).
It is indicative of the comic strip's dual-natured depiction of Hobbes that he never
becomes completely animalistic during these forays outside. He runs on two legs, he
plays with Calvin but not with other animals; as we mentioned, he is not a predator
and never hunts, and at the end of the day, just like Calvin, he is pleased to rest at
home and enjoy a meal prepared by Mom
The Man Cub and the Tiger Parent
Many of the conversations between Calvin and Hobbes concern Calvin's attempts to
understand the adults around him and the adult world. "Hobbes frequently appears
cleverer, more adult, and occasionally almost superegolike." (Kuznets, ph. 55). When
Hobbes answers Calvin, we can consider his views to be more "mature
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", however, he
never "represents" the adult world; as a tiger, he always answers from an outside
perspective. He might explain, translate, help Calvin to assimilate the adult world, he
is never a part of it.
In his "otherness", Hobbes doesn't necessarily reinforce society's values in Calvin: "toy
characters in literature, like many other character in fantasy, often function as
subversive forces acting out crises of individual development generally repressed by
modern society." (Kuznets, pg.7) so while Hobbes might be more "mature", he is not
an adult version of a Man, but perhaps an adult version of something else,
Despite his calmness and tendency to want to avoid trouble and think of the
consequences, all things that could be considered "adult" attributes, Hobbes is acutely
distinguished from the adult world, represented for Calvin by his parents, his
babysitter, and his teachers. Hobbes would often help Calvin observe ludicrous
aspects of the adult world, and reject them. Hobbes might serve as a surrogate parent,
but he is a parent from a different world, that works according to different rules. While
forethought and responsibility are still important, careers or politics or pop culture are
not.
Being a wild animal, Hobbes can sound and act exactly as an adult and still be
immediately positioned in opposition to the normal, adult human world. He is always
"other", and by embracing certain values and rejecting others, he provides an

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For example, Hobbes "has an admitted interest in the female of the species and keeps reminding
Calvin, locked into his love-hate relationship with Susie Derkin, of the more romantic aspects of
relationships between the sexes." (Kuznets pg. 55)
alternative to Calvin; a counterculture to something hypocritical and fake. In other
words, Calvin doesn't have to grow up to be his Dad; he can grow up to be a tiger.
The Dual Natured Animal
From its inception, Watterson made three vital, important decisions: that Calvin would
have a friend only he can see, and only he can interact with; that the reader would see
this friend as Calvin sees him; and that friend would be an anthropomorphic wild
animal: a tiger. From the first strip and all through the decade of its run, Hobbes had
an ambiguous nature. From the simple question, is he real? Is he imaginary? A
question Watterson is always very careful never to answer one way or another, we
see Hobbes playing different parts at different times, or even at the same time. He is
a force calling outside, to play, to run, but also to rest, to lie in front of the fire, to be
careful, avoid danger, to think deep thoughts but also play silly improvised Calvinball,
to wax philosophically about the meaning of culture and play while hurling down a
snowy slope into certain falls.
Is humanity opposed to nature? Kuznets sees these texts as valuable places where
"the insiders and the outsiders meet" (pg. 5); while Nature is often depicted as "good",
more connected to who we are, and Watterson certainly loves the woods and hills
around his home (Dear Mr. Watterson, 2013) he is never completely alienated from
the adult world. If being civilized is to be a certain "object", to have a certain job, a
title, a nationality, Hobbes transcends those boundaries, and serves as a bridge for
Calvin to transcend them as well. He allows Calvin to rebel not by destroying but by
alluding. As an animal, he represents nature in her role as counter-ethic to how we
are demanded to live our lives, but since he is never completely animalistic, Calvin,
and us with him, is never asked to completely abandon the human world, the many
comforts of constructed society, that both Calvin and Hobbes know how to enjoy.
The wild animal here is not an extinct animal, caged in a zoo, forced to play one role,
as predator, as danger, but rather is all those things: he can stalk but he can run, ride
a sled or climb a tree, eat a sandwich and sit on a chair, and run, be both Inside and
Outside.
We, the readers, are unique in Calvin's world, because we are the only people other
than Calvin that can see and hear Hobbes. We are invited to Calvin's point of view not
just to strengthen it, but also to allow Hobbes to serve as the bridge for us; invite us
to transcend those same boundaries; help us be more like tigers.

Bibliography

Dobrin, Sidney I. and Kidd, Kenneth B. Wild Things: Children's Culture and Ecocriticism.
Wayne State University Press, 2004
Kuznets, Lois Rostow. When Toys Come Alive. Yale University Press, 1994
Watterson, Bill. Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995. Andrews McMeel
Publishing, 2001
- The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2005
Dear Mr. Watterson. Dir. Joel Allen Schroeder. Fingerprint Films, 2013.