1: Barrel - Part 1

Comic #1 (September 30, 2005) Next > >|

Barrel - Part 1

Original title: Barrel

Title text: Don't we all. Original caption: He's fairly upbeat about the situation!

Explanation

This was the fifth comic originally posted to LiveJournal, as well as being categorized as comic #1 on xkcd.com. The previous one was 2: Petit Trees (sketch), and the next one was 24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey. It was among the first thirteen comics posted to LiveJournal within 12 minutes on September 30, 2005, on the first day of the xkcd LiveJournal account.

This is the first comic in the The Boy and his Barrel series, which shows a young boy floating in a barrel in an ocean that doesn't have a visible end. It comments on the unlikely optimism and perhaps naïveté people sometimes display. The Barrel Boy is completely lost and seems hopelessly alone, without any plan or control of the situation. Yet rather than afraid or worried, he is instead quietly curious: "I wonder where I'll float next?" Although not necessarily the situation in this comic, this is a behavior people often exhibit when there is nothing they can do about a problematic situation for a long time; they may have given up hope or developed a cavalier attitude as a coping mechanism. The isolation of the boy may also represent the way in which we often feel lost through life, never knowing quite where we are, believing that there is no one to whom to turn. In 1110: Click and Drag there is a reference to this comic at 1 North, 48 East. Wired determined a more realistic description of the behaviour of a barrel in the water.

This is the first in a six-part series of comics whose parts were randomly published during the first several dozen strips. The series features Barrel Boy, a character that is different from what would quickly become the xkcd stick figure style. The full series can be found here. After Randall released the full The Boy and his Barrel story on the site, it became clear that the original comic 20: Ferret was also part of the series. The comics are listed in the order chosen by Randall:

• 1: Barrel - Part 1
• 20: Ferret
• 11: Barrel - Part 2
• 22: Barrel - Part 3
• 25: Barrel - Part 4
• 31: Barrel - Part 5

The title text expands on the philosophical content, with the boy representing the average human being: wandering through life with no real plan, quietly optimistic, always opportunistic, and clueless as to what the future may hold.

Transcript

[A boy sits in a barrel which is floating in an ocean.]

Boy: i wonder where i'll float next?

[A smaller frame with a zoom out of the boy in the barrel seen from afar. The barrel drifts into the distance. Nothing else can be seen.]

Trivia

• This is the first comic not drawn on checkered paper.
• This is the first xkcd comic featuring Barrel Boy.

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Discussion

Doesn't his big interactive piece (#1110) refer to this one? -- ‎58.37.35.32 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

It does. There's a note somewhere in that explanation page referring back to this page. Davidy²²[talk] 09:28, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

This comic under my interpretation is that like the kid in the barrel his mind was wandering at the time of his drawing of the comic and it reprsents his wandering mind as he may be bored and it is in the middle of nowhere but at the same time it is somewhere. but its waiting to get someplace (an island?)

--TheWeatherMan (talk) 13:57, 23 January 2013 (UTC)TheWeatherMan

when ever I feel isolated from society, I like to contemplate the ladders I could build for them to see things from my perspective. We will never manage to teach kids how to exist in chaos, we need to outsource our thinking, share ideas, to see new options for each of the impossible answers. Sic-if is here to stay, because it's the only hint we will get of the perfection they want us to achieve. Anything less then the total perfection is unsustainable. - 98.211.199.84 14:22, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

It's been over five years, so I think I should be that one annoying person who breaks unspoken streaks: If an endless ocean were a representation of life, I'd be the one who's fasioned myself an oar (or I can just use my hands to paddle if I can't get an oar). I then tell the floating people around me, "May the waves bring you luck." I proceed to go toward a location on the horizon that appears arbitrary but is actually something really cool, and then I greet all the other people who have chosen to go here also or were brought by fate/the sea (basically synonymous). Finally, I do cool things. Anyway, this comments section has been very inactive. No purpose, just wanted to motivate y'all to set goals for yourself and let you know that good things will happen if you do. For now, though, it's night, and the others are asleep in their barrels. Good night and why did I write this 108.162.215.70 07:01, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Working theory: this IS Beret Guy. This is I think years before his first appearance, and Beret Guy is apparently younger than anyone else who isn't explicitly a child. So this is him. The youngest form of the one who had nothing but wonder...

That DOES kind of make sense. The part where he rides the winged ferret is just the kind of weird Beret Guy thing that Beret Guy does. :) -- ThePineapple11 (talk) 12:35, 6 December 2020 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~) -ThePineapple11

I wonder how long it'll take until someone finds and replies to this comment. Qwikster (talk) 02:02, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

I resisted, and slept on it, but... found, a while a go; replied... well... obviously right now. Not that it means much. 172.70.91.158 10:10, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

is this guy like early cueball? 172.71.150.157 03:11, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
is the guy like early cueball? 172.71.150.156 03:15, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

As a serious answer(/a serious answer), Barrel Boy is recognised as his own character, distinct from even the earliest Cueball (and Cueball-adjacent) stick figure, by both a great gulf of style and by personality. Though the (pre-publication) artistic development of style from cartoonish-realism to barebones-stickfigurey might well have included a 'missing link' or two of Barrel Boy 'growing up' into the author-avatar/'Rob', the debut to the world (in either its pre-website order, or numbered as per xkcd.com) intermingles the two stages of (possible) evolution in a way that at least makes it clear that Randall considers them parallel art styles, not sequential. As above, there are theories that this character is who 'grows up' to be Beret Guy, while one could perhaps also directly link with the 'Jack' kid-stickfigure (named as per Jack and Jill) that pops up years later, infrequently as contrast to the contemporary Cueballs/other adults. (There's also a 'young Hairy' that pops up every now and then, from before that point, but (IMO) slightly less associable as a direct descendent.) Of course, there must be something of the artist in all Randall's drawings, by conscious of unconscious projection, so there might be a discernable 'family trait' to all of them, whether Black Hat and Beret Guy or even Stallman and Gygax... 172.71.241.100 09:31, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Fyi, I liked your explanation so much i added it to Barrel Boy! --FaviFake (talk) 18:16, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

If I'd have known, I might have used slightly less fluffery (plus added the internal links you did, but I was just about to go out for the day, and was too rushed to make it shorter, snappier and better overall, or take time to hold back the purple prose), but surprising and gratifying to have just seen it appear there. "Hang on... those are my words, but I'm sure I..." ;) 172.68.205.123 19:19, 22 February 2025 (UTC) <-- at one time, at least, having been 172.71.241.100

Yeah it was great regardless! Anyways, I don't think I've ever asked you this: i was wondering, why don't you just register an account? You could do so many more things! --FaviFake (talk) 20:20, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

I do what I can, when I can, and have done for long enough. (Srsly, I sometimes see a decade-old IP-signed Talk comment and think "that was me!", because of a particular turn of phrase in it.) And, knowing me, if I had started off with an account, I'd have forgotten the password at some point in the last 10+ years (relying on a saved password on a machine that then went kaput a couple of years down the line), so would have had to restart the continuity like I've had to do with other places. Additional (less useful) reasons might be a) that I try never to re-use usernames across systems, and never did manage to think of a particularly apt one I'd like to use here, and b) if I was to have been a proven username of good- and long-standing, I'd have been roped into being an admin at some point (been there, done that) and, with special respect to Kynde in particular, I don't really have the desire to go that far again. But enough about me. (Especially as you don't and can't even know if I'm the same 'me', or being entirely truthful with all my "yeah, I was a BBS Sysop in the late '80s, and the combination of ruling with a firm and fair hand and the occasional practical joke got that sort of thing out of my system" posing. Pretty much truthful and pretty much posing, perhaps!) Thanks for asking, you're not the first and I'm pretty happy with the answer(s) I tend to give. And now we return you to our regularly scheduled programme... 172.69.79.191 21:06, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
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