Literary Devices in Watchmen
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Place = Time (But Don’t Tell Anyone)Cities change over time. Some grow and become ultramegalopolises, or whatever the word is. Others shrink until they’re practically ghost towns. Your great-gr...
Narrator Point of View
In simple comics, all you need is dialogue (speech balloons) and action (characters moving from one panel to the next). So it’s no surprise that the baseline point of view in Watchmen is third-pe...
Genre
MysteryWatchmen begins with two detectives investigating the murder of Edward Blake. Good cop, bad cop, right? Nothing unusual here. But Moore quickly twists the mystery genre by making the real pr...
Tone
Simple fact: Alan Moore is not an average person. Read or watch his interviews, look at his photos. If you were making a movie and looking to cast a warlock, your job would be super easy. Of course...
What's Up With the Title?
Fooled you! Looks like this album is missing its title track, so click your way over to “What’s Up With the Epigraph?” to find out how Watchmen really got its name.
What's Up With the Epigraph?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?) – Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347, Quoted as the epigraph of the Tower Commission Report, 1987Consider Alan Moore a punny, punny man. He must...
What's Up With the Ending?
Seymour, Seymour, Seymour. The world is in your hands, literally. The last line of dialogue in the entire book occurs when Mr. Godfrey, the fascist-friendly editor of the New Frontiersman, tells hi...
Tough-o-Meter
It all boils down to Alan Moore’s beard and his dragon-skull rings. Does this man look capable of writing light, breezy, summery stuff? Watchmen is a far cry from the funny pages, no disrespect t...
Plot Analysis
The Comedian Dies in New YorkThrow an old superhero out of a high-rise to his death, and you’ll have the reader’s attention. It’s early, so we don’t even know what we don’t know yet. Luck...
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
We could have gone down another road and called Watchmen a comedy, but we’ll stick with the quest for now. To Rorschach, NYC is and always will be a cesspool, but if he can bring the Comedian’s...
Three-Act Plot Analysis
Rorschach lives on canned beans and vengeance, so he’s hungry to solve the Comedian’s murder. No can do, as long as he works solo. Even after Dr. Manhattan ditches Earth for Mars, Rorschach can...
Trivia
Maybe Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis aren’t dead after all, but faked their deaths to protect their relationship. (Source.)Make no mistake, Alan Moore will never ever see the film version...
Steaminess Rating
Let’s face it, Dr. Manhattan is one big, blue nudist. That entails some male, full frontal (IV.10.4.). Now that might make you squeamish, but it’s tastefully done, more like a Greek statue than...
Allusions
Book of Common Prayer, Burial of the Dead. (II.9.1-4, II.12.1, II.15.8, II.16.1-3, II.18.8-9, II.19.1-9)Genesis chapter 18, verse 25 (III.28.4)William Blake, “The Tyger” (V.28.10) Bertolt Brech...