Has there been a deeper examination of the absurdity of human condition...

Has there been a deeper examination of the absurdity of human condition? A more incisive study of the struggles of contemporary middle class Americans living in the late 20th century?

There sure has - just drop the first two panels.

Li'l Abner

But without them the final panel is deprived of meaning, of greater context. It would be akin to stripping everything away from an automobile until only the engine remained

There is more meaning and pathos in the three panels than there are in entire anthologies, than in most writers entire life's work. Hemingway, Frost, Joyce, Keats, Shakespeare, they must have lamented being unable to reproduce such greatness in their own works

The detail I find most fascinating about these three panels is the manner in which the smoke from Garfields pipe breaches the borders of the comic, shattering through the two-dimensional space and curling upwards into an infinity. It is reminiscent of the mighty smoke plume the Apollo 13 left in its wake as it ascended toward the moon on April 11th 1970, towards the first instance of man kinds greatest dream, the conquest of heaven itself

In a world so devoid of greater meaning and purpose, there are few, if any, comic strips that convey as sublime a truth as what we see here in this provocative comic strip, so powerful that it strips one of human arrogance, our certainty in our own importance as inheritors of the universe

At first glance it appears to be another piece of dull, "chuckle-worthy" piece of "wacky cartoon humor", all too easily dismissed as a mediocre, occasionally funny part of the funny pages. But when one begins to peer into the depths of this sublime lotus flower, to challenge onself to look past ones own prejudices, its mysteries will slowly begin to unveil themselves.

For you see, we are all John Arbuckles, struggling to find our pipes, our fingers grasping blindly for comforts that, at any moment, could be seized from our grasp by fate, as cruel and fickle...as a cat

Ingest these truths. Seize them, seek them out with the desperation of a drowning man grasping at a boat, for truth, like opportunity, is fleeting and oft-overlooked

We are all locked in the pursuit of truth, all on the cusp of a great revelation, greatness we cannot manage to articulate just yet. Yet we try, we of the endless gibberings, howling into the wind that bellows and rages against us, mocks us. We are all the John Arbuckle in the middle panel, grasping, blind, on the cusp of the GREAT REVELATION

Mankinds most ancient struggle is with himself, against the forces of apathy, of laziness and indulgence, vices that threaten to consume us from within, like termites gnawing on the innards of a young, fertile tree.
We see this apathy reflected in Garfields portly face, his slouched body language and grotesque belly symbolizing the wages of the sin of sloth. Garfield is the sin that threatens to rob us of life's luxuries and opportunities, to snatch away our proverbial pipes should we be unaware, should we lose vigilance for even a second. He is our rogue and anarchic nature itself, the tragedy that we must always contend with, everpresent, mocking, loathesome, grotesque...yet oddly endearing. For what is ever so quintessentially human as our own flaws?

This comic teaches us about the harsh reality and overall futility of humanity and its constructs. The pipe, Jon's property, is appropriated from him by Garfield, a house cat. Jon, upon seeing his stolen property, is visibly upset. This is a very natural reaction for any human to make, should any human do this. However, Garfield is a cat, and this anger is meaningless to a cat. Cats do not recognize property. Jon forgets this, and takes his rights and property for granted; unaware that they are both truly meaningless in the end.

His very anger in and of itself is absurd, because it is as you say; cats have no concept of property, of ownership. The idea is so ridiculous to a cat that it does not even consider it, does not regard it as an idea even worth considering. To a cat, all of our struggles, our joys, our sorrows, our victories and philosophies are trivial, absurdities, nothing more than dust bunnies. In a way life is a lot like a cat; life, the very cells of our bodies, they don't care about the struggles of the human condition. It just IS, in much the same way Garfield smoking the pipe just IS.

Now this is shitposting of the highest quality.

I am sure by now you are beginning to understand the magnitude of the multilayered truths at play here, the sheer scope of the message this comic strip, from this one messianic man, brings us. It is overwhelming, frightening in its largesse, yet reassuring. There is no inherent purpose, no overarching meaning to this life, yet millions of years ago man stared out into the silent heavens and across the barren landscape, and MAN said, let there be a KINGDOM, upon which my children will build an empire into the heavens. Johns defiant shout, his cry against the anarchic forces of nature, of our own nature, is a cry heard throughout all of human history. Every War, every period of piece, every foundation and decline of a civilization, has been this cry, this quest for order in the GREATER COSMOS

I like lasagnacat, it is funny

There is, ultimately, hope, in this otherwise bleak encapsulation of Mans place in the universe. We might live in a dark, inescapable cosmos of cold, unwelcoming points of light in the night sky, but we DEFINE what gives each and every one of our lives meaning. We DARE to dream of a tomorrow, an act so insane, so delirious in a universe that can at any moment destroy us, that WE are the CAT with the PIPE. We set the terms, we take action, we DARE. And yet, we are also John, defiant, angry, impatient to take what is rightfully ours, even after indifferent, animalistic forces seek to deprive us of our right to own, the have, to love and to cherish the people and things closest to us. In this three panel comic strip, I see the echoes of a message brought forth in paintings such as "Lady Liberty Leading the People", by Eugene Delacroix, "Washington Crossing the Delaware", by Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutze, and photos such as the "Pale Blue Dot" photo taken by the Voyager Space Probe. I see hope for tomorrow, and a trillion tomorrows, faith in human achievement, goodwill for mankind and a thousand other worlds

Ah, but you see humor is only the vehicle used to communicate some of the most impotant ideas of our age, vast and essential truths that only the bold, the eager, the curious, may see. It makes you laugh...and then you think, first inward, then outward, until your world shakes with the magnitude of truth, thrums like a guitar string, a tuning fork, until your consciousness aligns with the world, and you are one, and it is one with you

Gimme Jon pasta

Your quest for pasta must be a symbol for your quest for personal fulfillment, a search for meaning in a life inherently devoid of it

Garfield is a cat who says funny things.

I thought that was Heathcliff?

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Pure kino

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Which will you be? The aggressor or the victim? The optimist or the pessimist? The man beholden to the dreams of tomorrow's children or a man shackled by the past? The Man or the Cat? None of these are the wrong answer, as long as you look life in the eye, and with a defiant scream yell into the heavens and TAKE THE PIPE

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it's funny because he goes on for a really long time about a three panel comic strip

Is this a metaphor for the struggles of wartime pacifists in India during the Second World War?

Ah, but that is but one of the many multilateral of humor, comedy and wit at play here. Go deeper, young user. DARE to go deeper

Do you dare to pierce the veil?

Here, in this version of the comic strip, we see John embrace the absurdity of the cosmos Garfield represents, and in doing so, surrenders the pipe to Garfield. LET the universe be chaos, he seems to say. I ACCEPT it for what it is, for its contradictions, dualities, I accept all of it in its sacred nonsense, it's eldritch, swirling miasma of EVERYTHING THAT IS

insert long winded philosophical examination and break down of comic strip here

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You'll never read about Garfield wanting to drag a person into the street and shoot them ever again.

I'm just a bit concerned about Jon's taste in pipes. A purple stained briar?

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Someone post the vdeo. You now the one.

Not canon.

That's John Arbuckle for you; a plain man, but not averse to whimsy, to fun. His life is painfully ordinary, so ordinary in fact that it is extraordinarily ordinary. The purple pipe represents his more innocent and childlike nature, his sense of optimism and joy that so sharply contrasts Garfields studied nihilism and acerbic wit

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this is actually a real strip that followed the pipe one, not an edit

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