As we all know, the Pattersons’ opinion of their own moral excellence has little bearing on reality. We have Elly and April loving saving face too damned much to admit to the anger and jealousy that consume them, we have John thinking that he’s a good guy that fallen moderns don’t understand and we have Mike grousing that he would be the good kid people like if it weren’t for the fact that everyone’s trying to crush him so they can laugh at him for wanting to be happy too. What these four sad losers have in common is that they’re aware that people don’t like what they do and it bothers them. Liz is different, though.
How Liz is different is simple: she isn’t really aware that people don’t like what she does and she isn’t aware of what she’s doing to begin with. The strip that best defines Liz has her stand around watching John and his model railroading buddies do their thing. We know that she’s too chicken and also kind of too dim to ask if she can participate but she doesn’t. When John says that if she’s just standing there like a mook, she can at least try to be useful, she’s enraged. She’s not some dimwit just standing around like a wooden Jesus in a country graveyard. She’ll prove that she’s not….and then, she’ll go back to hovering around in the background with that baffled, dead-eyed frown on her face because she doesn’t know what’s going on and she doesn’t like it anyway. This leaves us with:
Axiom 5b:
Elizabeth is pretty much devoid of anything like self-awareness and tends to ascribe herself positive traits she doesn’t have.
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