A Sense of Doubt blog post #2460 - Literary Analysis of Watchmen - chapter one, page one

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2460 - Literary Analysis of Watchmen - chapter one, page one

This opening text sort of repeats with edits.

So, I might have mentioned this situation recently.

My students are writing a literary analysis essay on the novel Watchmen or if they choose, comparing a hero's story in Watchmen to the hero story in Binti based on the ideas of archetypal hero myth:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1576 - Hero's Journey

This is essentially part four or even six of a series to provide them with materials and ideas, but I am calling it part three.

I did the first part here:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2450 - How to write a literary analysis essay

I did some brainstorming, though arguably I ran out of time to do what I wanted with the brainstorming:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2451 - WATCHMEN Brainstorming - Writing a Literary Analysis about the Watchmen novel for College Composition

and I did some modeling with "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath and in class with "The Second Coming" by WB Yeats:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2456 - Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus" - partial reprint - for teaching ANALYSIS

So, that's a lot of parts. 

I go into more depth about all of this stuff here in arguably the second part

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2459 - Examples with James Joyce's "Araby": How to Write Literary Analysis

I do not want to give my students too much analysis of Watchmen because I want them to analyze it, but just looking at the first page, there's so much to analyze.

Following, I have a mini-literary analysis essay just focusing on the first page. Please do not judge too harshly. It's first draft writing. I need a better thesis and more content in the analysis. But it's a good enough example for the students to get some idea of analysis of Watchmen, using visuals from the book much as writers quote literary texts, and the cites I prefer, using the chapters and those pages numbers of the original comics.

In the graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the first chapter ends as it begins with a long zoom out that tracks up and up through all panels in the grid. Neither the first page nor the last matches thee standard nine-panel grid used throughout the majority of the book. But in each as the "camera" of artist's lens, the reader's view, tracks higher and higher from an extreme close up, the comic's narrative established a central theme of the book, the often repeated question, seen as graffiti spray-painted throughout its fictional city: "Who Watches the Watchmen?"

This question has many layers, such as the oversight of superheroes, forced into retirement by the Keene Act; god-like super-powered beings that preside overall though making a show that they just help, such as Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias; the citizens of this fictional world who seem more caught up in their own personal problems to care much about what these "heroes" do until it affects them directly; and the police who "strike" which forced the Keene Act outlawing "masks" into existence (Moore & Gibbons, ch1-18). Because it's the police looking down on a crime scene on the opening page, but who is looking down on Laurie and Dan's rooftop conversation and the Comedian's smiley face pin on the last page of chapter one?

Moore and Gibbons establish the literary methods of the book on the very first page: themes of crime and justice, themes of violence and degradation, themes of apocalypse, themes of saving the world from apocalypse, and the multitude of connections that are baked into the text to at once suggest that not only is everything connected but only through investigation and analysis will the truth be revealed.

In the first page alone, Moore and Gibbons establish many elements of the book as whole: cyclicality and connection, hero-savior complex, intense psychological construction of character, artistic camera effects as part of the narrative technique, clever foreshadowing.

The first page starts as the last page starts: zoomed in extremely close on the Comedian's smiley face pin splattered with blood. One page one, the button is in the gutter, wedged next to the street drain where a shop owner hoses the blood from the crime scene, the dead body, off the sidewalk. By panel three, we see the proprietor, looks like a diner cook, shouting at a man walking through the blood holding a sign reading: "the end is nigh."

Much like we do not know that the dead man, Edward Blake, is the comedian to start, on this page, we do not know that this red-headed warner of doomsday is actually Walter Kovacs, aka. Rorschach.

Chapter One is told from Rorschach's point of view and narrated by his journal from the very first panel, a journal that figures importantly in the story and its ending as it both begins and ends the entire novel. These connections and cyclical patterns are just some of the artistic methods Moore and Gibbons use to tell their story. Readers will not see the human face under Rorschach's mask until he is captured and unmasked and yells "No! My face! Give it back!" at the end of chapter five (Moore & Gibbons, ch5-28).

However, starting with chapter one panel one, readers do not know anything yet even though Moore packs so many connections to the entire novel into the first page.

In the first panel, Moore established that we are seeing narration from Rorschach's journal, literally torn from the pages of the handwritten book, and we know the date: "October, 12th, 1985."

Rorschach's opening lines of his journal foreshadow so much of what's to come.

With the lines, "Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach..." (Moore & Gibbons, ch01, pg.1, panel 01), Rorschach's narration begins the book.

The art that accompanies this text in the very first panel of the first page of the first chapter is as disorienting as the text itself. Who is Rorschach? Why is he writing a journal? Whose dog is this? His? Then why doesn't he call it "my dog"?

The art is  clearly an extreme close up. Is this Rorschach's POV, what he sees? We don't know.

Given that the dead dog, its stomach burst implies blood, is this red stuff blood?

One benefit of a comic book and how visuals work is that often a reader's eyes will scan the whole page, and we do see what will be revealed in a few panels that someone is hosing blood off the sidewalk and on the next page we will find out where that blood came from (it's not the dog's).

The panel's art almost seems like abstract expressionism at first because the image is such an extreme close up that the red and flowing blood looks more like paint on a canvas rather then the real blood we will learn that it is later on the page. Also, the view has zoomed in so close on this fragment of the larger scene that we do not even yet see the gutter, the gutter drain and grate, the bigger pool of blood, the man with the hose, or the other people (a man with a sign) immediately in the scene that are so far "off camera."

And yet, the smiley face button is an image we can grasp and understand in this extreme close up, though we don't know why it's there or what it means or what it might have to do with the narration in the caption: "This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face" (Moore & Gibbons, ch01, pg.1, panel 01). Is this smiley face that face Rorschach has seen? (It's not). But the smiley face button (we do not even know yet that it is a button) is a small and recognizable thing that gives something concrete and clear in what would otherwise be an abstract painting of smeared red paint and dark backgrounds. 

And the red splatter on the button is blood, but we don't know this yet either.

What we do know is that some person named Rorschach is writing a journal that may or may not have anything to do with what we see and that we are looking at an extreme close up that by glancing ahead we see that it zooms out higher and higher up to reveal the whole scene and the viewer, though ultimately so many floors up, we have to wonder how the cop viewing the scene below has Superman's telescopic vision or if the extreme close up at first may belong to someone on the street.

In any case, the zooming out of the first page mirrors how it foreshadows the entire book much as the last page of this chapter also zooms out even higher and to a god-like overview, which makes its own meaning. 

We know from the start how this book will examine characters and situations in near microscopic detail and also expand to a large and high-above overview.

And yet, there's more to unpack here. What about this text, this dog, this city that is unmasked and afraid of Rorschach?

The dog is a central image for how and when Kovacs becomes Rorschach: "Then I was just Kovacs. Kovacs pretending to be Rorschach" (Moore & Gibbons, ch6-14).

Though it will be Rorschach that kills the dog to attack and terrify the kidnapper and child abuser who had abducted a six year old girl. Killing the dog preceded killing the man, though leaving him with a hacksaw, a means to escape to avoid burning to death. When Kovacs kills, he becomes Rorschach, the unyielding, relentless avenger for justice.

The dog mentioned in panel one has been killed by a "tire tread," but it's quickly obvious that he was killed by the city, and as Rorschach explains: "This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face" (Moore & Gibbons, ch1-01).

Rorschach has unmasked the city just as the city masked him, turning him from a man, Kovacs, pretending to be an agent of justice, to Rorschach, an almost preternatural force for what he believes is justice, preternatural even though he is really just a man.

And the city fears him because he has a God complex just like Veidt. Rorschach and Veidt are both trying to save the city, the world, in their own ways. Rorschach wants to save the world at a street level, much like Batman, and Veidt, with delusions of God, though not really a God like Dr. Manhattan, hatches an elaborate and lavish scheme to save the world from what appears to be eventual and inevitable nuclear armegeddon.

So much is packed into this first panel and connected to so many other parts of the novel, material that will not make full sense and be unpacked, really, until the reader finishes the entire book, which is the main lesson of Watchmen: Who watches them? 

As the "camera" tracks upwards to the entry point into the story and the scene, which is not Rorschach's scene quite yet, readers learn even more of how Rorschach sees the world, which is much the same as how many of the other characters see the world: a place to be saved. The heroes must have savior complex; after all, why else would they be heroes?

For Rorschach, the filth and degradation of crime and immorality, much like that of his mother and her filthy "boyfriends" is every where. The streets are extensions of the gutters, the entire city is filling up with filth and the blood of innocents. Only people like him, like Rorschach, stand in the way to protect the innocent, and when the innocent cannot be saved or protected to bring justice to those who violated the innocent.

In Rorschach's world view, the city's crime and horrors are filling it up like the blood washing down this drain, and it will kill them all, kill "the vermin" when as he puts it in a telling image "the drains scab over," as if they are wounds that heal but scabrously.

Much like Veidt is willing to sacrifice thousands to save billions, Rorschach from his god-like position on high will not save those he does not consider worth saving: "whores and politicians." Two great scourges in his life: his mother and people like President Nixon who are responsible for the "filth," sex and murder.

In this third panel, readers finally see Rorschach and the man hosing off the sidewalk, but readers do not yet know it's Rorschach in his Kovacs disguise.

Readers also can only glimpse his sign about impending doomsday, but this connection between the narration and the image along with the depiction of the blood and the description of the blood that "foams up" begin to indicate to the reader to study everything presented very closely because the creators are going to pack in lots and lots of connections and symbolism in each image, each caption, dialogue, and more.

The next three panels continue to zoom upwards until by panel six readers see the hand of the speaker, one of the cops, in the scene that continues on the next page.

Rorschach's narration continues to establish Rorschach's psychology as he prefers his father and President Truman to his mother and Nixon. His values are made clear "decency" and Honest work ethic: "a day's work for a day's pay." The very heart of American values unlike those he describes as "lechers and communists," who are leading citizens over the cliff like lemmings to sea. Rorschach has no sympathy for these "followers" who have made their choice: "don't tell me they didn't have a choice" (Moore & Gibbons, ch1-04-05).

More and more connections pile up. Like the world "stands on the brink," readers see the cop standing at the broken window high above the street scene. Rorschach continues to detail those who are causing the ruin of the society he holds dear, the good old days, the Truman era, when America was great, adding liberals, intellectuals, and smooth talkers (people like Veidt) to the lechers and communists. Though in the face of all of this near-apocalyptic horror: "all of a sudden nobody can think of anything to say" (Moore & Gibbons, ch1-06), which suggests that no one is a voice for the truth, a voice of reason and justice, a fighter for the innocent and for morality, which is the purpose of Rorschach's journal and why he submits it to the New Frontiersman newspaper, what he considers the greatest publication with credibility and integrity, though readers will see its true face as well and know the Rorschach has been duped.

And in yet another connection to show readers how densely woven is this complex tapestry of a story Rorschach's narration about no one having anything to say introduces the first line of dialogue, spoken by one of the cops at the murder scene far above the street as shown in the final panel, a purposeful deviation from the nine panel grid for dramatic effect:

So many ideas are brought together on this page. The camera here in this final panel shows readers both the viewer of the street scene, the cop, and the reader's view above that of the characters, which will be further emphasized on the last page. 

Who watches the Watchmen? 

We do.

Works Cited

Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. New York: Warner Books, 1987. Print.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2111.12 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2324 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.