31: Barrel - Part 5

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Barrel - Part 5

Title text: Too good not to happen.

Explanation

This gives a happy ending to the The Boy and his Barrel series, with the flying ferret from 20: Ferret. The humor is derived from the juxtaposition of two unlike elements - in this case, the contemplative and even dark nature of the series being resolved through the timely intervention of a comical flying animal. The ferret could also be interpreted as a symbol of hope and following your dreams, since in its original appearance, its powers of flight were just that: a dream. However, the dream becomes reality to save a child from an endless sea of hopelessness.

The last image on the what if? article Niagara Straw features Beret Guy flying inside a barrel, which may be a reference to this series. The series is probably inspired by the novella The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Randall is well known to be a fan of this book.

Somewhere between the release of the first ferret comic in October 2005 and the re-release of that comic (and all the other from LiveJournal in 2005) on New Year's Day 2006 on the new xkcd site, Randall's brother's ferret died - as given by the new RIP comment in the title text. The sad comment in the title text of 25: Barrel - Part 4, ":(", possibly implying harm to the boy, along with this RIP comment, may imply that the boy has died and joined the ferret (in flying to Heaven). However, this line of reasoning only makes sense if the ferret actually died before the release of both the Part 4 comic at the end of October and this comic, which was released in the middle of November 2005, one and a half months before the new title text was made public.

This is the last 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. 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

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.

Transcript

[A boy is grasping on to a piece of driftwood in an ocean.]

[A zoomed out view of the boy still grasping on to a piece of driftwood in the ocean.]

[A ferret with some airplane wings and an airplane tail flies above the ocean.]

[A shot of the ocean, now empty.]

[The flying ferret is carrying the boy to safety.]

[The ferret carrying the boy is now in the distance with the sun on the horizon.]

Trivia

• This was the thirty-third comic originally posted to LiveJournal. The previous one was 28: Elefino, and the next one was 32: Pillar.
• Original Randall quote: "The ferret got to fly, in the end!"
  • The link took the reader to the first ferret comic.
• This comic was posted on xkcd when the web site opened on Sunday the 1st of January 2006.
  • It was posted along with all 41 comics posted before that on LiveJournal as well as a few others.
  • The latter explaining why the numbers of these 41 LiveJournal comics ranges from 1-44.

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Discussion

this series feels like a homage to "The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry". the sketches have the same - quality ( for want of a better word) Arjunsharma (talk) 07:52, 25 March 2013 (UTC)jun

This was also my first thought today when I did look at this comic again. Maybe the Barrel is just the Meteor from "The Little Prince".--Dgbrt (talk) 21:50, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I have to wonder if the flying ferret has anything to do with Richard Bach, a noted aviation author who published a series of flying books called "The Ferret Chronicles" in 2002-2003? --144.92.241.6 21:56, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Should the last trivium be put in the explanation section? 0100011101100001011011010110010101011010011011110110111001100101 (talk page) 04:38, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Last panel reminiscent of http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/4 141.101.81.87 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)