I’m my perusing of the interwebs it has been my finding that the character people identify with the most in the Watchmen is none other than Rorschach. Sure some people like Dr. Manhattan due to his unique perspective, and the Comedian’s death is what drives the story. Night Owl and Silk Spectre are the most human. Ozymandias is the something of a magnificent bastard. Yet the character people like the most, much to the frustration of Alan Moore, is a psychotic, dirty, asexual, borderline hobo, who is a conspiracy theorist jack ass. Moore originally intended the character to be a a straw objectivist, representing a philosophy he strongly disagreed with. Why to people like Rorschach ? Do his tortured past and brutal nature give him a Wolverine like bad ass nature or is it something more?
Rorschach has the greatest integrity of any character in the book. As an objectivist he believes that there is right and wrong, good an evil. Murderers are bad, there is no way around this. To objectivist A is A and can never be B. At the end of the Watchmen, Adrian Viedt has killed millions of people faking an attack on the world. In the graphic novel he fakes an alien invasion. In the movie he fakes an attack by Dr. Manhattan. Regardless the result is the same, Veidt has successfully scared the world away from nuclear war. All of the surviving protagonists, though horrified, are thankful that the war has been averted. Silk Spectre and Night Owl wonder off to have “thank god we’re alive” sex. Dr. Manhattan decides that life is valuable and goes to another galaxy to create some. The only character who objects is Rorschach. To him people must know what happened even if it brings back the threat of war. To maintain silence, he is murdered by Dr Manhattan, because after all whats one more body among millions? In real life the Cold War never got as close to an atomic apocalypse as in the book. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan the US never fueled up the bombers, or if it had, cooler heads prevailed. Without sounding Jingoistic at the end the real life story the Soviet Union fell. (USA USA USA). The world still isn’t perfect, but the Cold War super powers aren’t at each others throats anymore. We did it on our own and we never needed a Dr. Manhattan or an Adrian Veidt to save us. To the modern public Veidt’s grand plan seems excessive and unnecessary. All of the people killed in Manhattan are supporting characters we care about. The other heroes’ acceptance makes them look as though they approve of the death of Bernard the nerd reading comics, or Bernie the newspaper man. Rorschach’s therapist and the Lesbian taxi driver were both good people and didn’t deserve to die. In this last act of hopeless defiance Rorschach galvanizes his positive characteristics. Before this he is sympathetic because he had an tough life, and ‘cool’ cause he is tough and violent. Refusing to accept a holocaust essentially makes him look like true hero who sticks to his guns. In some readings he could be a martyr for Bernie, Bernard, and the rest.
Alan Moore may have envisioned Rorschach as a crazy person void of redeeming qualities, but ultimately his creation grows a life of its own. In the real world the atomic warfare never had to happen. It’s no too much of a stretch to believe something else could have been done to prevent war in this fictional 1985. If Night Owl or Silk Spectre had rejected Veidt and been killed, they could have been more popular. Instead their complacency detracts from their likability. Though it wasn’t the author’s intention, the greatest hero of the story is the nut carrying the sign saying “the end is nigh.”
