Violence And Pain In Alan Moore's Watchmen

In the first chapter of Alan Moore’s graphic novel, Watchmen, a masked vigilante named Rorschach utilizes violence and pain as a method of achieving results. His method confirms and extends a few of the theories mentioned in Harvard professor Elaine Scarry’s published study, The Body in Pain. Rorschach’s violence on pages twenty-three and twenty-four of Watchmen stems from his mission to find out who brutally murdered Edward Blake, a fellow vigilante also known as “The Comedian”. Rorschach enters a dimly lit, sketchy bar named “Happy Harry’s” and approaches the bartender, Harry, looking for answers to his question. A customer at the bar named Steve rudely antagonizes Rorschach, so he uses Steve to get the answers he needs from the rest of the bar’s customers. …show more content…
The effect of Rorschach’s infliction of pain is Steve’s cry alerting the rest of the bar-goers; they are now willing to address Rorschach’s pressing question. In the middle-left panel, we see Rorschach in the background towering over his victim, with the rest of the bar sitting alert in the foreground. The next panel zooms in on a couple of the customer’s faces, which emphasizes their fearful expressions. By the author allowing readers to view the customers’ fearful faces, we can see that this act of violence was effective for Rorschach, as it seemingly produced the outcome he was anticipating. The bar goers’ reactions to the pain Rorschach inflicted upon Steve, as well as their attention to his incomprehensible cries proves that Rorschach is effective in using violence to attempt to gather information from