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Watchmen (comics)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
→Is Rorschach's Absolutist Worldview Good? Or Bad? (Y/N)
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*** Yeah. That kinda shows when he comments the lesbian chick's death as her being "a victim of her own indecent lifestyle". He calls Sally a "bloated whore", so he probably thought she kinda invited Comedian's actions upon herself.
* Because Rorschach as a character is an exploration of passionate political ideals, and with that necessitates hypocrisy. (Not to mention, every character in Watchmen is hypocritical and short-sighted. It's the human condition.) He detests criminals, yet he is one. He defends women and children, but detests them. He's moved to tears by what Veidt does, yet idolises Truman for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
** Rorschach does not detest children, and I really can't imagine what could possibly give you that idea. It's the other way around. The one thing in the world that he can't stand, the one thing that can make him lose his cool, is the idea of children suffering, scared, being abused. "Personal reasons," he says (hinting to a link to his own childhood), and remember: his failure to save the Roche girl from a horrible ordeal and death is what turned him from Kovacs into Rorschach.
* As for the disconnect between rape being a crime and the Comedian, his idol (and remember, he sees everything as black and white. Positive associations with the Comedian means that any negative ones should be ignored.) being a rapist; perhaps he doesn't view crimes committed by costumed heroes as crimes at all, he and his own are above the law.
** I personally find Rorschach's code to include his intense loyalty to costumed heroes, his "fraternity." It also wouldn't surprise me if Rorschach took the misogynist view that Sally actually initiated the attack considering his views that all women are whores.
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**** Terror, like, you know, bombing New York and inducing worldwide panic.
* Hurm...
* It appears to me that most tropers don't understand that Rorschach unyielding moral "absolutism" is firmly based on absolute relativism. Reread his monologue to Doctor Long. It's very plain and clear. "This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces." "Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose." "Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. There is nothing else." And finally: "Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach." This is, well, conclusive. There are no two readings. Rorschach is an atheist and an existentialist, he realizes the inherent subjectivity of the human experience of morality and believes there are no moral absolutes whatsoever. Therefore, as we live in a morally blank world, with no meaning and no pattern, he is free, as free as everyone else, to upheld his own sense of right and wrong every time he clashes with society. And that's exactly what he chooses to do, certain of his freedom, with unyielding determination, even in the face of Armageddon. Absolute moral relativism that leads not to nihilism but to existentialism, that's Rorschach's way of thinking. Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus would have been proud of him. ▼
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I must say, Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus would have been proud of him.
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