Watchmen: Rorschach's ethics (loads of spoilers)

Cafe Society
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This post will probably be rather long, rambling and stream-of-consciousness, so grab a beer and sit back. Unless, of course, you haven’t read Watchmen, in which case you should do so before reading any further, since this post will ruin it for you.

I think Watchmen is one of the greatest comics ever written (V for Vendetta and Sandman beat it, I think, but I can’t think of any others that do), and I find Rorschach to be the most interesting character in Watchmen and by extension one of the most interesting character in all of comics.

I find that two of his lines sum up his character quite nicely. The first, obviously, is his motto “Never compromise, not even in face of Armageddon”. The second is his speech to his psychiatrist:

Shouldn’t this philosophy turn a person into a pure pragmatist, since they can see no abstract values at all? Running to alert the world of Ozymandias’s plot, causing World War III, is certainly not the action of a pragmatist.

I think this speech also runs a bit at odds with Rorschach’s devotion to the law (at some points he indicates that illegal actions are by definition wrong), which in turn runs at odds with Rorschach’s own actions, which are clearly illegal.

Furthermore he does betray his motto at least twice. He doesn’t punish the neighbour who lied to the newspapers about him sexually propositioning her, but instead lets her go for the sake of her children (apparently the mental well-being of children with whom Rorschach identifies is more important than averting Armageddon), and he lets Moloch “off the hook” despite the illegal medications he found in Moloch’s home, apparently because he sympathises with Moloch who suffers from incurable cancer.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, so I’ll just hit Submit and see if there are any interesting replies when I wake up tomorrow.

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I think the key line is this:

[quote]

His philosophy is pretty existentialist and it’s obvious to me that he’s seeking to impose meaning on the random chaos around him. His actions are pretty consistent with this interpretation.

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But Rorschach isn’t devoted to the law, only to his own personal code. He’s perfectly willing to ignore the law if doing so suits his purpose but just as willing to use it, as when he uses Moloch’s unlicensed gun as leverage against him.

Rorschach’s ethics are best summed up by his response to the Keene Act - murdering a rapist and leaving the body outside a police station. He’s saying that society must be protected from evil men, and if the law isn’t able to do that then other means must be found.

Applying this to the examples:

Moloch’s medicine - this isn’t harming anybody because Moloch isn’t pushing it. Rorschach sees no need to punish Moloch, but he does note the name of the manufacturer so he can report them.

His landlady’s lying - she claims she was misquoted, which may or may not be true but Rorschach doesn’t know for sure. He’s also faced with the issue of her kids, who unlike him have been shielded by their mother from the worst side of her life. If he reveals it to them, he will be repsonsible for harming the innocent - something his code does not allow.

Revealing Ozymandias’s plot - as I just described, Rorschach’s code prohibits the harming of the innocent. While he supported the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, that was a war and the Japanese were the enemies of society. This is the deliberate slaughter of the innocent, and Rorschach refuses to accept a choice of two evils.

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I think Rorschach’s refusal to allow Ozymandias’ plot to go over is because the plot would accomplish great goals

  1. under false pretenses
    and
  2. via the deaths of the innocent.

Rorschach’s code–and I don’t have the text here with me, so I’m generalizing based on my memory of my favorite character–is that if you’re going to do something for moral reasons, then you ought to be proud enough to admit it. And conversely, if you can’t admit it, then it’s not something you’re proud of, and there’s probably a reason.

Rorschach is my favorite among the Watchmen because he knows that the titular paradox (who watches?) can only be resolved if the Watchmen themselves are open about their goals, and above question–if they plot and have conspiracies, then they’re no better than the villains they try to put away or the government they work as an appendage to.

Or maybe I’m pressing my transparency-in-government agenda on a character.

5

Rorschach takes some cues from the Categorical Imperative too. The rapist he murders and the person he burns alive in the warehouse aren’t for his benefit. He looks out on what the officials are NOT doing and does it.

He is out to benefit mankind, by breaking an obscene amount of fingers and giving people who commit self-destructive behavior a hard time. The poor boy does things to help others, he doesn’t do it for himself. Sure he has that nagging vengence for his childhood hidden away, but overall he is out to help selflessly.

Like he says, it isn’t God who butchers children. It’s humans, and he does what he can to prevent them and get the fuzz on the beat.

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I think you might be reading too much into it.

To get almost completely off-thread (but not really, bear with me): I actually read WATCHMEN as a Batman parody. You have the two sides of Batman: Dark Knight Detective and “Where does he get those wonderful toys?” Nite Owl representing the goofy (even in the spelling) and Rorscach is the Dark Knight.

Following that a bit further: Nite Owl just got into it because he’s a spoiled rich kid who doesn’t have anything better to do while Rorscach gets into the act because when he was young a crime was committed against him/his family that ruined his life such that he feels the need to not so much avenge himself, but make the world safe for everyone else.

Nite Owl had all but given up the superhero gig after the Keene Act, we assume without any fight, we assume because the game isn’t as fun when he’s about to get hurt. Rorscach, on the other hand, won’t give up because that’s the only thing that keeps him going.

Which brings us to the ending, which concerns making choices and what happens when the choices aren’t what you wanted to do. Dr. Manhattan finally lets go of his idea that is, or needs to act, human; Nite Owl finally gives up the idea of being a superhero and discovers the worthwhile things in life (awww); Ozzy realizes that, for all his prowess and arrogance, he really doesn’t have the power to effect anything meaningful (that is, while he can cause Earth-shatteringly important things, in the scheme of the cosmos, he’s meaningless); and poor Rorschach realizes that if Ozzy’s plan succeeds, innocent people will die, yes, but it will end strife in the world (it’s a longshot, but R. seems to believe it) and will take away Rorschach’s reason for living - and he’s not willing (like Nite Owl) to accept that/change. Suitably hippish of Moore if you ask me.

As for the psychologist, I figured that was just Moore’s jab at thinking that you could figure someone out in an institutionalized way. Whether or not this had to do with the fact that he was making a complex comic that people would analyze (or if he even conceived of it as such) is up for debate. Besides, everyone in the [WATCHMEN] world had a pat answer that they wouldn’t let go of, from Ozzy to the newspaper guy, Dr. Manhattan to the dude who ran the tabloid and the psychologist is just another variation on that.

Thanks for reading, I’m here all week.

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He’s just a man, you know. Oftentimes one’s feelings get in the way of one’s beliefs. I thought that was rather clearly illustrated in this situation.
Furthermore, seeing as his feelings are that which birthed his beliefs, I don’t see him at fault for choosing emotion over principle.

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While I really enjoyed the character, Rorschach was fundamentally a plot device to offer the reader a moral decision in : stand by your principles and agree with the nutcase and let the world go to nuclear hell, or sell out your ethics and thereby help save the world on the blood of the innocent.

Its a very unbelievable set of circumstances (would the Soviets and the US really have united to deal with a common threat of alien invasion? would they have let the truth interfere in that?) but it does make scathing comment on the black and white morality of the superhero genre. There are no “good guys” and “bad guys” (was Ozymandias good or evil? How about Dr Manhattan?). There is no clear cut “good” and there is no clear cut “evil”, and if you think there is you’re as nutty as Rorschach.

9

Um, you know he’s describing a Rorchach blot, right?

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I found this analysis of the major players a while back. Some of it is a bit forced, but I found it a valid appraisal of the characters.

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Um, no he isn’t. And I can’t see how anyone who’s read the comic can believe that he is. “Existence is random”? “Rudderless world”? How can you fit that into a Rorschach ink blot? The only part that vaguely fits is “has no pattern save what we choose to impose”, and that refers back to “existence”. Nope, I’d say this goes deeper than an ink blot.

Evil Death, I think you’re right about Rorschach’s relationship with the law. I must have read too much into Rorschach’s comments about Moloch’s gun and drugs. Still, I think Rorschach is an interesting dichotomy. He’s willing to start World War III (causing the slaughter of hundreds of millions of innocents) to expose Ozymandias’s murder of a few million innocents. That just doesn’t add up mathematically, and for someone who believes in no “vague metaphysical forces”, it doesn’t quite make sense.

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I’m going to have to disagree. What Rorschach is saying is that the world has no rules and direction in and of itself - that it is we who impose rules and order upon an otherwise chaotic existence. And, like an ink blot, when you observe life for long enough you realise that it has no real meaning.

There are two parts to the creation of Rorschach. The first was when Kovacs heard of Kitty Genovese being murdered as forty people watched, which taught him that standing by and letting others take responsibility for creating order was not enough; this led him to make the mask and start upholding the law.

The second was when a six year old girl was kidnapped, murdered and fed to dogs. This is where Kovacs drew the conclusion by means of observation that the world he thought had order was in fact meaningless chaos. Prior to this point, Rorschach had stayed within reasonable bounds - he didn’t kill criminals, he was relatively sane. It’s only after that he ignored the law and entirely distanced himself from humanity, because he no longer believed that the law was order.

(If you read everything, you’ll notice that Kovacs quitting his job in the garment factory and picking up his sandwichboard coincides with the latter event.)

**

You’re still misunderstanding his position. Remember what he says about the mask he makes: “Black and white. Moving. Changing shape … but not mixing. No gray. Very, very beautiful.” That’s how he feels about life. To him, there is no gray, no greater or lesser degrees of harm.

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I would also go so far as to say that Rorschach was not sane, as we understand the term. He was obsessed with “imposing order” and punishing the guilty, insofar as his obsession would allow.

He let the landlady go because to do otherwise would have harmed the children, and the innocent must not be harmed.

He attempted to inform the world about Ozymandias’ deception because a crime of insane magnitude had been committed, and his obsession demanded that the guilty be punished, that some sort of retribution be exacted.

He knew he was no match for Ozymandias one-on-one, since Ozzy had earlier stomped both him AND Night Owl, working together. So he was driven to try to return to civilization and somehow raise the hue and cry.

By the same token, he was no dummy. He knew he’d be starting WW III. He knew the horror that his actions would trigger.

But he had no choice. And I think this is what led to the final confrontation outside, when Dr. Manhattan meets him and says, “I can’t let you do that.”

Rorschach could simply have done what Night Owl did, kept his mouth shut, and let things progress. Night Owl and the Silk Spectre had no moral quandary with this. They were shaken, sure, but… it was just too BIG. A few million die horribly… but the world is saved from armageddon. How do you make morally based decisions on THAT scale?

Rorschach can. “Never compromise, not even in the face of armageddon.” To him, there is no effective difference between one murder and a million. The guilty must be punished. Even if doing so sets off the armageddon the murders were committed in order to stop.

Rorschach knows this. Rorschach is fully aware that the decision he is making may not be the right one, and may well result in his death, and many MORE deaths, and it is eating him alive… but his obsession is in control, and its dictates are clear: punish the guilty. Impose order. Make It All Right, Somehow.

…which, I think, is why he is weeping when he tears his mask off before Dr. Manhattan and screams “Do it!”

…because then he can be free of the weight of decision, and of the drive of obsession, once and for all.

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In a storytelling sense, Rorschach dies at the end (I feel) -because- he betrays his philosophy. He’s no longer the man he was- he didn’t save New York (not that he’d be able to), and thus he is, in a sense, already ‘dead’. He’s in no way willing to sacrifice, and in no way willing to compromise, but he knows that telling the truth means even more killing, more pain, etc. He perhaps even knows that, in a small way, what Ozymandius has done may be right (although Manhattan later gives a line about how it’s not a permenant solution), and thus his ‘truthfulness’ dies. In a storytelling sense, he’s already dead. He just needs the physical representation of it. Let’s be frank- imagine how bad things would have been for him after that had he -not- died.

15

I think Master Wang-Ka nailed it.

Slight hijack:

I always pictured Ozymandias as being a twisted Doc Savage. Am I right? Even some of the artwork showed him looking like Ron Ely (from that movie).

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FTR:

The Watchment at Toonopedia.

All the Watchmen are based on old Carlton characters that DC had bought, but didn’t want to release for Moore’s use - so he made semi-original versions.

The Night Owls were taken from The Blue Beetles.
Rorschac was The Question.
Dr Manhattan was The Atom.
The Commedian was The Peacemaker
Silk Spector was Nightshade
And Ozy was Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt

(The Blue Beetle, The Atom and the Peacemaker all made it into the standard DCU…I think The Question may have as well. If the other two did they went way into obscurity even faster than the others… (Isn’t the Beetle the only one of the bunch still around?))

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Blue Beetle and Captain Atom became members of the Justice League and had their own comics for a while, long since cancelled. I know the Question, the Peacemaker, and Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt also had short-lived DC comics, but I’m not sure if they’re part of the DCU. I’ve heard they’re gonna have another go at a Question series with Rick Vetich.

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Oops…That’s right, he was Captain Atom, not The Atom. (The latter being a long-standing DC character…)

I didn’t know Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt had his own title.

The Peacemaker was definitely in the main DCU (I know of him only because he had an entry in Who’s Who). The Question I don’t know, though I have seen his book.

I do hope they pick up on the Question title again.

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All of the Charlton characters were brought into the mainstream DC Universe after Crisis on Infinite Earths (which eliminated all the parallel universes). Most of them got series of their own, or at least semi-regular gigs in team books.

Captain Atom-Had a solo title for 50+ issues, plus membership in Justice League and Justice League Europe.

Blue Beetle-Had a solo title that ran about 20 issues, plus was a Justice League mainstay for years, and is perhaps the character most identified with the Bwa-ha-ha era of the League.

Question-Had a solo title that ran for (I think) just short of 50 issues. His adventures were largely self-contained within his home of Hub City, but take place in the main DCU. For example, he was trained by Richard Dragon and Lady Shiva (who also trained Bruce Wayne), and he’s teamed with Batman, Green Arrow, and Huntress.

Peacemaker-Had a 4-issue miniseries and occasionally popped up in titles that had a military or intelligence community slant (Checkmate, Suicide Squad, Captain Atom).

Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt-Had a 12-issue solo series that tied his origin to Atlantis and used DCU characters Arion and Power Girl. He was based in London, so didn’t team up much with other heros (I remember one story with Justice League Europe, but that’s it.) DC no longer owns the rights to Thunderbolt as they reverted to his creator shortly after the end of his series.

Nightshade- Supporting character in Captain Atom. Long run as a member of the Suicide Squad.

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As for the philosophical side of Rorschach, someone within the series describes him as Manichean (I think it was Ozymandias in the text piece interview), which I think suits him to a tee.

However, I wonder if his black-is-black/white-is-white worldview is Moore’s commentary on objectivism. The Charlton superhero renaissance of the mid-60s was in large part due to Steve Ditko, who walked away from Marvel and Spider-Man after feuding with Stan Lee. Ditko worked on Blue Beetle and Captain Atom, but the Question was probably the most personal creation of all the mainstream superheros we worked on over his career. Steve Ditko was a devout reader of Ayn Rand and objectivist ideas tended to to find their way into his series (especially if he was writing and not just drawing).