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Marvin Mejia
Professor Jackie
English 114B
February 5, 2015
Saviors are Destroyers
Watchmen by Alan Moore is a graphic novel thats illustrated by Dave Gibbons and John
Higgons. It takes place during the cold war in the United States, an era where nuclear war was
imminent between the U.S. and Soviet Russia. Super heroes are usually seen as individuals with
tremendous powers who rid the world of evil, but in this graphic novel that thought is screwed
into a different ideology. Watchmen has its very own idea of a hero like what society has a
hero to be. Each hero has their own morals and ethics that they become blind to, so they use
their superiority over normal human beings to their advantage to follow their ethics and morals.
The Comedian, Edward Blake, is the first masked vigilantly to be brought in the novel.
He is murdered in the beginning of the novel by a masked killer and throughout the book you see
his true character. The comedian worked for the military because he was good at what he did
and it did not matter to him how many lives he took. He was rude, self-centered, an alcoholic,
pessimistic and more violent than any of his hero colleagues. He saw the world as cruel and
thought it was just one big joke. The whole idea of people living their worthless lives the way
they did, then they would rebel and his mind state was to save them by themselves by causing a
little pain to them. He lived life the way he wanted to and did not care for others wellbeing.
Since the world would always be cruel and vicious in his eyes, it did not matter if he put gasoline

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on the flame as long as he could tame the wild fire he had created and relieve people of the pain
because he is blind to the unjust actions that he is causing. He shot a poor, malnourished
pregnant woman who is holding his baby because she slashed him across his face with a broken
bottle, proving that he does not care for others well-being. Killing the woman and saving the
child from being born into the cruel world he saw that it was. He relieved people of their
suffering and saw it as a heroic duty in his eyes. The Comedian cared in his own way, this is one
of the ways a hero is described in the novel. There was also a hero, who used a ink blot mask to
serve his own type of justice the same as The Comedian who used the same actions.
Walter Kovacs was the son of a prostitute and as a kid got bullied for it. He cut up a dress
from where he used to work and used it as a mask, becoming a masked vigilante. After a scenario
that involves him beating a man to death with his own personal collection of knifes, he takes on
the alias Rorschach. Rorschach gets information he needs from people no matter how much pain
they are in. He punishes those that have done the hurting themselves, the hobin hood of this
novel. Rorschach has a very strong morals, he follows the saying be treated the way you would
like to be treated, or an an eye for an eye. The event that made him Rorschach, the victim killed a
little girl so Rorschach killed him. Rorschach is also the type that wants to keep his identity a
secret, without his mask he loses a bit of him where he wants to be isolated from the world. With
his mask on he can talk to people the best way he can without feeling like he is exposing his
weakness, himself. There is a sense of freedom when he disguises his true identity that he can
serve his own justice his own way no matter if it is cruel or not. Rorschach is blind from his
morals because thats all he stands for and becomes very stubborn about his morals by the way
he talks with society. Rorschach served his own type of justice and did it his own way while a
super human was told what to do.

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Jon Osterman was an atomic physicist and because of an incident in the work place he
became a godly blue figure known as Dr. Manhattan. Dr. Manhattan has the power to look
forward and back in time, control matter, as well as teleportation. He has these amazing super
powers and uses them for the United States military. He uses his powers only when addressed to
do so. When The Comedian shot the pregnant woman, he was there but did not do anything
about it. He is does not care about human beings or else he could have stopped the woman from
dying. He has these godly powers but does not use it for the right reasons. He goes through his
life accepting what happens in the future when he knows what will happen because he can
foresee it. He does not try to do anything about it even though he has the power to change it. A
super hero is the clich of a person having actual super powers but if they dont use them for the
right reasons then they are no different than a regular person. John has a girlfriend by the name
of Silk Spectre and she also fought, though if she had the right intentions is arguable.
Laurie Jupiter was known as the Silk Spectre because of her mother who was the first
Silk Spectre. Laurie did not like the life of crime fighting but she felt that it was her duty to pass
on her mothers legacy. Laurie was happy retiring the costume to live the normal life she wanted
to live. The only problem was all she knew were super heroes so she had no one else to go to.
Her morals of continuing her mothers legacy as The Silk Spectre made her cross the path of
only knowing super heroes. She felt as if a burden was put upon her so she fought crime to make
her mother proud. She does not like the way John sees her so she goes off and becomes
independent from him. Though she had the burden of being a hero from her mother, she then
starts making her decisions that are best for her and no one else. There is a man who has a huge
burden on him after killing the whole town of New York City.

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Adrian Veidt, also known as Ozymandias, is a man who was born into wealth. He used
that wealth to create a super hero persona known as Ozymandias who was known as the smartest
man on earth. Ozymandias sacrifices the whole town of New York, millions of people, in order to
save billions of people from nuclear war. A greater good type of moral, the lesser of two evils.
He created the whole masked killer theory and in doing so he got his way. He sacrificed people
and blamed it on Dr. Manhattan in order to get away with it. Knowing Dr. Manhattan would see
it in his point of view of sacrificing millions in order to save billions, he went on with his
devious plan. He did save billions of people but at a very significant cost that is like no other. All
of them are not your average super hero but Nite Owl is the closes to your average hero.
Daniel Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl ,who was retired due to the Keen Act that made all
masked heroes to retire. Dan later came back to fighting crime a little before Rorschach went to
prison. Daniels morals are true, he cares for their own well being. He visits the first Nite Owl on
a daily basis and saves people who are in a burning building from dying. He breaks Rorschach
out of jail because he believes Rorschach was framed and that it is unjust if he was falsely
accused of a crime he did not commit. He takes in Laurie Jupiter into his home that proves that
he is a kind person. Dan stops living in the past and starts enjoying the present. Proven when he
puts the costume back on and fights to save Rorschach. He starts a relationship with Laurie and
he is happy about the future and cares what happens because of the joy he feels. In the end, all he
cares about is Laurie, his future. All the characters have their own morals and ethics that they
follow.
All the characters had different morals and ethics that they believed and followed. Theses
morals and ethics make up the foundation of what makes them a hero. They continue to follow
there morals and ethics despite what others may think of them. Its the ability to keep on

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believing in their morals that makes their morals that much stronger to them and they then
become blind to it and believe to their full extent their morals are true. Becoming blind to their
morals ,they dont see the light from a different perspective and do not witness the sheer
ideology of another persons morals.

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Work Cited
Moore, Alan, Dave Gibson. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1986-1987. Print
Rapp, Eric. Watchmen: Deconstructing the Superhero 2012, online
PIANALTO, M. Moral Conviction. Journal of Applied Philosophy (2011), 28: 381395.