50 pages • 1 hour read
Alan Moore, Illustr. Dave GibbonsWatchmen
Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | YA | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Darkness of Mere Being”
Dr. Manhattan transports himself and Laurie to Mars, and Manhattan initially forgets to give her an air supply, but he saves her just in time. He takes her aboard his recently built ship and asks to talk to her about “the destiny of the world,” and how “we’re all puppets, Laurie. I’m just a puppet who can see the strings” (285). He explains how all of time is happening all at once and that there is nothing he can do to change the future. Laurie was his last connecting link to humanity, and he no longer has any concern with the affairs of Earth.
As he takes Laurie up and around Mars in his ship, she thinks back to her early days training to be a costumed adventurer, rattled by the sight of Mothman at a party, clearly affected by both mental health conditions and alcoholism. While Manhattan tells her that Mars is perfect without any life whatsoever and that the terrain will decide whether to support life or not, Laurie thinks back to the failed meeting of the Crimebusters, after which Blake started talking to her until Sally pulled her away angrily.
Laurie tries to use these stories to convince Manhattan of the value of life, but he responds that “I read atoms, Laurie. I see the ancient spectacle that birthed the rubble. Beside this, human life is brief and mundane” (297). He cannot see the future clearly, possibly because a nuclear explosion has distorted the electromagnetic signals. Laurie begs him to stop whatever calamity awaits them, but he continues on explaining natural phenomena on Mars that he finds more impressive than humanity. Laurie thinks again to a party where she confronted The Comedian—who was charming a group of political elites—about his attempt to rape her mother and threw her drink in his face. Laurie is pained that the drama of her life, and life in general, fails to move Manhattan. He responds that she fails to see things from his point of view as well. Suddenly, Laurie goes through a rapid flash of memories, until she hurls a perfume bottle in rage at Dr. Manhattan’s ship. She falls to her knees, sobbing with the realization that Eddie Blake is her actual father. This fact helps Manhattan to see the miracle of human life: “your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged” (307). He then resolves to take her back home.
The concluding section offers a series of newspaper clippings and other memoranda on Sally Jupiter. One from 1939 talks about how her sexualized persona has made her an object of desire, as much as fear, for the criminal underworld. Another speculates that she and Hooded Justice are a couple. Another is from a production company offering notes on a movie on Sally’s life. A letter from Captain Metropolis asks whether she is interested in a revival of the Minutemen. A letter from her husband Larry, dated 1948, describes how the group is coming apart and that she might want to get out while she still can. There is also a brief review of the aforementioned movie, a review calling it both “juvenile” and “pornographic.” The last is an interview with Sally from 1976, with provocative questions regarding the “seamier side of her crimefighting career” (312), the sexuality of various Minutemen, The Comedian’s attempted rape, and whether her daughter will follow in her footsteps.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Two Riders Were Approaching”
President Nixon and some of his top advisors fly to a secret bunker, where they watch world events unfold. Nixon clutches the nuclear “football.” Adrian Veidt is watching a bank of television screens and, based on his reading of the national mood, makes a series of investments accordingly. After recovering a spare of Rorschach’s costume, he and Nite Owl argue about whether to lay low and run data on the conspiracy against costumed heroes, or as Rorschach prefers, to go out into the underworld and squeeze people for information. Nite Owl loses patience, asking Rorschach “You know how hard it is to be your friend?” (324) Rorschach offers his hand as an apology, but they decide to do things Rorschach’s way. At their third bar, they find a man who passed money and information to Adrian’s attempted assassin, and he is panicking because many of his associates are ending up dead. They confront another man with a top knot, accusing him of being part of the similarly dressed gang that killed Hollis Mason.
Max Shea and Hira Manish are belowdecks on a ship, seeking privacy while the missing artists and engineers mentioned earlier are on the deck celebrating finally leaving the island. They are under the impression that the entire project is part of a highly secretive movie. However, Max discovers a bomb and clutches Hira as the ship explodes.
Nite Owl and Rorschach go to Adrian’s office to deliver their information, but he isn’t there. While Rorschach spats off a series of theories and random observations, Nite Owl cracks into Adrian’s computer and discovers that Adrian himself may be responsible for everything, as he owns a shell corporation called “Pyramid Deliveries” that the man they interrogated mentioned. They decide to go to Adrian’s Antarctic compound to find out more. Unsure of what will follow, Rorschach leaves behind his journal, with all its up-to-date information on Adrian, by dropping it in a mailbox. It ends up at New Frontiersman, but the editor angrily demands it be tossed aside with other junk mail. Nite Owl and Rorschach crash land in Antarctica. They take out hoverbikes, speeding toward Adrian’s compound as Adrian watches them on a screen.
The closing section is a series of documents related to Adrian Veidt’s product line. A letter from a marketing executive ponders the legal and ethical question of adding actions figures based on Nite Owl, Rorschach, and Moloch. Adrian responds by suggesting that the anticipation of war will feed interest in more militaristic figurines, so his Saturday morning cartoon should start introducing “an army of terrorists” which they can “then duplicate here along with weapons, accessories, and vehicles” (344). The next letter is also from Adrian, concerning his line of “Nostalgia” perfume. He calculates that if war occurs, business will vanish, but if it doesn’t, people will be newly optimistic, so he counsels a shift away from the back-looking “Nostalgia” to a forward-looking “Millennium” fragrance. The last piece is an introduction to “The Veidt method,” a mail-order self-help course that focuses on meditation techniques, diet and exercise, mental conditioning, and how to affect “our environment positively and responsibly” (346).
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
This pair of chapters offers debates concerning Discovering a Purpose for Existence, both of which will be reconciled by the end of the comic. On Mars, Laurie wants Manhattan to use his powers to avert an imminent disaster that he can only faintly perceive, while Manhattan insists that he neither can nor wishes to intervene in a world that has rejected him. Laurie delves into a series of memories to try to persuade Manhattan of the charms and idiosyncrasies that make a life like hers unique and therefore valuable to the universe, regardless of her personal relationship with Manhattan. However, Manhattan subtly turns many of her own memories against her. Her earliest memory, of her five-year-old self awoken by her parents’ arguing and then cradling a snow globe until her stepfather’s anger causes her to smash it, pairs the beauty and fragility of an inanimate object against the squabbles of human beings who inflict their insecurities upon young children. Laurie’s vision of herself as a teenager, training to take her mother’s place as Silk Spectre, is soured first by the appearance of a deeply troubled Mothman at her mother’s party and later by the revelations contained within Hollis’s Under the Hood. All this appears to confirm Manhattan’s “asking the point of it all, that struggling; the purpose of this endless labor; accomplishing nothing, leaving people empty and disillusioned. Leaving people broken” (292). Realizing her argument is going nowhere, she cites her confrontation with The Comedian over his attempted rape of her mother as “just confirm[ing] things, right? All these wretched, grubby little human encounters; better off without ‘em! None of it ever meant a damn thing, anyway” (301). It is Laurie’s realization that The Comedian is her father—her ability to see several moments of time converging upon one another at once—that changes Manhattan’s mind. He may care little for humanity, but he does care for Laurie, so his final act before departing Earth is to ensure her safety and happiness.
The other debate concerns the renewed, but still tense, friendship between Nite Owl and Rorschach. Rorschach is incapable of living in any other way. While Nite Owl finds Rorschach’s methods and typical environs to be horrifying, Nite Owl has also come to realize that he is also most himself in his costume, in pursuit of the next thrill that comes from a heroic quest. Their union is a linkage of brains and brawn, promptly (if still too late) bringing them to the gates of Adrian Veidt’s Antarctic fortress.
