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Nathan Cheung English 1B Professor Humann 26 June 2013 Man is God? Comic books have long only been seen just as a form as entertainment. Alan Moores Watchmen smashed and destroyed that classification. His goal for Watchmen was to give comics a special place when [he] was writingWatchmen. [He] wanted to show off just what the possibilities of the comic book medium were (Dent). He redefined his comic books into great graphic novels exploring many deep themes. When I was first assigned to read Watchmen, I was slightly incredulous and disbelieving of the literary value of a comic book. After two weeks of reading I was astounded by the depth and breadth of content in the book. Another two weeks of class and I even amazed at how even the most irrelevant things were intricately connected to the themes of the story. The recurring motif of the clock held many different themes but the one that stuck out the most was how anyone could be god. The Watchmen began after the Keene Act, the disbandment of most of the costumed heroes, and takes place in the alternate history of the Cold War. The story begins with the death of the Edward Morgan Blake. His death eventually leads Rorschach to explore the details and find out that Blake was the Comedian. Rorschach begins his solitary investigation on the suspicion of someone is beginning to take out all the remaining costumed heroes. Rorschachs theory begins to look very practical as events begin to happen one after another beginning with

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Dr. Manhattans seemingly permanent leave from Earth to Mars after the dramatic reveal of his supposed influence in the death of his close friends and loved ones. After Dr. Manhattans selfexile was the plot to rid of Adrian Veidts, who also masqueraded as the costumed vigilante Ozymandias, with an attempted assassination. Rorschach was the next to fall as he was arrested during his attempt to find the perpetrator of all the events that had transpired. Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre begin to confide in each other and take up costumed vigilante work up again and break Rorschach out of jail. Dr. Manhattan reappears to take Silk Spectre to Mars to engage her in a debate on to save humanity. While Dr. Manhattan and Silk Spectre are yakking away on Mars, Rorschach and Nite Owl began to look into the details behind the Veidts assassination attempt. As the two friends find more and more information, they realize with horror that Adrian was the true mastermind behind the Comedians death, his own assassination attempt, and Dr. Manhattans removal from Earth. They head to the Antarctic to confront Adrian and realize Adrian removed the costumed vigilantes in order his plan for peace on Earth to start. His plan revolved around the latest in genetics to create a large sea monster that had a cloned brain of a human psychic. Adrian then teleported the large sea monster into Madison Square of New York which consequently caused the creatures death and created a psychic bomb that promptly killed half of New York. This large scale disaster caused the world to cease all hostilities and take up arms together to face this new extraterrestrial threat. The book starts with its conclusion with Adrian questioning Dr. Manhattan, who arrived too late to prevent the disaster, whether or not he did the right thing. At the end, it seems world peace is prevalent through the Earth and a newspaper editor deciding whether or not to reveal the contents of Rorschachs journal which held clues to Ozymandias involvement with the giant alien.

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well with Watchmen the adage holds very true. Within the twelve chapters of Alan Moores Watchmen, there is so much context packed in that a readers sense is so flooded that it may miss many of them. Among the many motifs such as the smiley face, orb, nostalgia, triangles, and clocks, I find the clock as one of the most poignant motifs. The clock is most noticeably seen before every chapter slowing counting down to midnight and eventually Armageddon. However, the clock holds another meaning altogether for me. The clock symbolizes Dr. Manhattan. In chapter four, Dr. Manhattan relives his memory as Jon Osterman before the manifestation of his identity as Dr. Manhattan. His father was a watchmaker and clock repair man who urged his son Jon to take up a more noteworthy career as a scientist. Jon complies and begins to study science. He meets a girl named Jenny Slater and falls in love with her. After a date with Jenny, Jon fixes her watch and goes back to his lab to retrieve it. He is locked inside the lab where he is disintegrated with his last thoughts of the fixed watch. Osterman began to slowly reconstruct himself starting from his circulatory system to his muscular and finally his blue skinned self. Ostermans newly reconstructed self had properties akin to god. He had full control over atomic structures and was considered omnipotent. He viewed time not as linear but rather something was more akin to water where past, present, and future was all mixed together. He in essence lived in the past, present, and future which gave him the sense he seemed to know the future and it was fixed rather than flowing and unchanging. Dr. Manhattans view on his new state, which was revealed in chapter nine page five, took on the stance that he was a puppet who could see the strings rather than being god (Moore). However, Alan Moore seems to disagree by purposely structuring the book in a way that juxtaposed his likeness to god. In chapter two page 12, the preacher is seen beseeching the Lord to have mercy and in every panel of his speech, Dr. Manhattan is the centerpiece of the panel seemingly as if

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the prayer was directed to Dr. Manhattan. On the last panel of the last page of chapter three there is a quote from the book of Genesis saying shall not the judge of all the earth do right? with Dr. Manhattan once again in the spotlight staring at the audience. The verse comes from Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and the word judge refers Yahweh, the god of the Hebrews. The reference to god juxtaposed with Dr. Manhattan filling the surface of Mars refers to his omnipotent power to either save the world or judge and destroy it. Throughout the story, Osterman refuses all claims that he is god. In the final chapters of the book where his prediction of future events was disrupted by tachyons, he is seen that even he could not foresee everything and disputing the claim that he had godlike wisdom and his views on predestination. Osterman held to the belief that everything was preordained and they were puppets and he was any different. Yet he actively changed history with his involvement in the Cold War. It begs the question of whether or not that he was omnipotent and was his views of predestination correct. The final chapters seem to disprove of Ostermans godhood. Osterman was but an ordinary man before his dramatic change. A psychoanalysis of Dr. Manhattan would reveal many things. After his change, Osterman inherently believed that he was human with superpowers and nothing more. Most humans view gods as beings with supernatural power, a being that no human could ever attain. I believe Osterman held similar views. Osterman grew up during the World War II era where Christianity was the most prevalent religion. Christianity and most of its tenets were known to almost every Americans. Osterman was no exception, he most likely grew up learning that god was a supernatural being with no equal who created the world. After his transformation, Ostermans subconscious held onto that idea that god was just one being with not equal, which lead to his stubborn denial of his

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godhood. Osterman subconscious rejected the idea that a common man could become god. He didnt even for a second during the whole book consider the idea that he was god. I believe Osterman would reject his status as a god until the day he transverse to another galaxy to create his own race which would subsequently begin worship him as god. The idea that Osterman, who was simply a normal human, could become god could be explained through a psychoanalysis of Moores own life. Moore was an occultist and on his fortieth birthday, he openly revealed his status as a magician (Dez). His dedication to occult led to his views of questioning the idea of one god. The essence of occult groups believes in that man naturally has supernatural power. Alan Moore obviously went further down that thought and explored the idea akin to Mormonism where man could attain godhood. He implanted in Watchmen his theory that a regular man could attain godhood. In fact, as he foreshadows Dr. Manhattans ability to go and create his own world complete with humans, the reader naturally follows the thought that perchance one of Dr. Manhattans human could also obtain godhood and whether or not our own Earth is a product of a human turned god. The Watchmen is the deepest comic book I have read of all times. At first the book seemed like a joke and a waste of time of a regular good versus bad story but then during class as we began to inspect and pick apart the book. The seemingly common place items such as a watch began to slowly evolve. From symbolizing the start of a single character to eventually taking us on a journey of exploring the ideas of god and whether or not can man achieve godhood, the watch slowly evolved into a regular day object into a thought provoking motif. The watch is just but one of the many, many motifs in Watchmen in fact, the link of a watch and Dr. Manhattan is only one of the many, many themes that is explored. Watchmen is one book that I wish I had more time to delve its deeps and seek through all its hidden meanings.

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Works Cited Dent, Nick. "Alan Moore Writer of Watchmen". Time Out Sydney. Dez Vylenz (Director) (30 September 2008). The Mindscape of Alan Moore (Documentary). Shadowsnake Films. Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1987. Print.