Dr. Manhattan: “The Superman exists…”

Figure 1. Dr. Manhattan working to isolate a "gluino."

“…and he’s American” (IV.13).  His backstory comes straight out of a Marvel comic, a company famous for its heroes who are made so by exposure to some form of atomic energy.  He begins life as Jon Osterman, a kid predisposed toward ingenuity.  He becomes a physicist, working in high-tech tests for the federal government concerning “intrinsic fields.”  An accident in the lab one day disintegrates his body, but leaves his consciousness intact, which begins reassembling its parts:

It’s November 10th now.  There is a circulatory system walking through the kitchen…

November 14th: A partially muscled skeleton stands by the perimeter fence and screams for thirty seconds before vanishing…

Really, it’s just a question of reassembling the components in the correct sequence…  (IV.9)

The last portion is a narrative bubble overlaying a panel showing watch pieces laid out on Jon’s desk when he was a teenager.  As the son of a watchmaker, he begins life trying to learn the trade, only to have his father push his life in a different direction.  When Einstein unveils his theories concerning time and space, the father is so distraught that he declares “If time is not true, what purpsoe have watchmakers…?” (IV.3).  And that sentence belies his view of humanity that runs through most of the novel– we are primarily material determined through the laws of a nature that is a “maker-less mechanism” (IV.28).

He spends much of the book on Mars, having left behind Earth and completely destabilizing the balance of the Cold War.  He has found dealing with people too limiting and constricting.  In one of Watchmen’s books-within-the-book, one of Osterman’s former colleagues take a more overtly metaphysical viewpoint compared to the title of this post, though one no less political:

I never said, “The superman exists and he’s American”.  What I said was “God exists and he’s American”.  If that statement starts to chill you after a couple of moments’ consideration, then don’t be alarmed.  A feeling of intense and crushing religious terror at the concept indicates only that you are still sane.

…

I do not believe that we have a man to end wars.  I believe that we have made a man to end worlds.  (Dr. Manhattan: Super-Powers and the Superpowers II)

This power underscores his disconnection.  When Eddie Blake/The Comedian murders a pregnant woman out of a fit of revenge, Dr. Manhattan protests, “She was pregnant.  You gunned her down.”  Blake says “Yeah, yeah…And you know what?  You watched me…You don’t really give a damn about human beings” (II.15).  He has the ability to change so many things, but often chooses to simply observe from a detached scientific perspective.  No one fully understands his perspective within the universe, largely because he stands in a strange place with respect to time’s flow, seeming to experience it all at the same time.  Nothing is linear in his frame of reference.

Figure 2. Watchmen's most famous icon.

The watch becomes a dominant metaphor in Dr. Manhattan’s character, and for the book as a whole.  The infamous smiley face image with the trickle of blood (Figure 2) is a visual reminder of the Doomsday Clock inching ever closer to midnight and armegeddon.  It’s hard not to read the symbol on Dr. Manhattan’s forehead (Figure 1) as another visual analogy to the same.  Once he rematerializes in the lunchroom for the lab in which he met his accident, he is immediately tagged as a political specimen, even finding himself asked to adopt a symbol: “If I’m to have a symbol, it shall be on I respect” (IV.12).  Even his name is chosen for political reasons: “for the ominous associations it will raise in America’s enemies.  They’re shaping me into something gaudy and lethal…” (IV.12).  He becomes a walking reminder of the dehumanizing force of technology, especially when it is applied to politicized ends.

In addition, the watch metaphor indicates a steady, measurable march of events with discernible cause and effect relationships.  Those chapters focusing on Dr. Manhattan, particularly Chapter IV (“Watchmaker”), demonstrate his viewpoint that there is no discernible causal relationship between events, at least not in his viewpoint.

But his disgust at his politicized situation drives the reader to a sense that he does, indeed, care about something.  In his climactic discussion with Laurie about their relationship and humanity’s worth, he says this:

I said, often, that you were my only link, my only concern with the world.  When you left me, I left Earth.  Does that not say something?

Now you have replaced me, and that link is shattered.  Don’t you see what that means?  Don’t you see the futility of asking me to save a world that I no longer have any stake in?  (IX.8)

Yes, he is detached from people, but that does not mean he has completely forsaken his humanity.  His detachment stems more from his incessantly politicized position, turned into a weapon and used to enforce a position he sees no clear justification for.  He is a man in need of a miracle, and he finds it once Laurie realizes who her father is.  Dr. Manhattan finds a miracle he overlooked:  humankind’s ability to persevere, both physically and psychologically.  As Laurie is crying, his revelation leads to a strange moment of poetry:

Come…Dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.  (IX.28)

Moore forges a moment allowing his reader to feel hopeful and reassured — Dr. Manhattan has found a reason to fight for humankind! In the final scene, he returns to take on Adrian Veidt and stop his final plan, intoning to Veidt that “this world’s smartest man means no more to me than does its smartest termite” (XII.18).  In this moment, we, the readers, want Dr. Manhattan to kick Veidt’s behind, and the tone of his rhetoric indicates that this is exactly his intention.

And then, Moore rips the rug out from under us again…  Veidt’s masterstroke isn’t the giant squid that levels half of New York, but the use of the world’s media to demonstrate to his fellow Watchmen that his plan has worked — peace is breaking out between the US and Soviet Union to tackle some new threat to both.  Veidt has united all of mankind toward one end.  And Dr. Manhattan sees the logic in what Veidt has done.  His newfound respect to life and its rarity now drives him to accept some death for the greater good, no matter how horrible the massacre. He tells Laurie of his conclusion:

Logically, I’m afraid [Adrian is] right.  Exposing this plot, we destroy any chance of peace, dooming earth to worse destruction.  On Mars, you demonstrated life’s value.  If we would preserve life here, we must remain silent.  (XII.20)

He goes on to state that he “understand[s] without condoning or condmening” Veidt’s actions, saying he wants to leave Earth and “create” life (XII.27).  Jon has come to accept his identity and ability.  And then he drops the most important words in the entire book.  Adrian asks if he did the right thing “in the end.”  Dr. Manhattan replies “Nothing ends, Adrian.  Nothing ever ends” (XII.27).

I’m suspicious of reading the author’s intentions into any character, but Manhattan’s statement I think (thanks to some discussion with Red Rocker) is a clear indication of at least one of Moor’s positions: that there is no teleology in the universe, but that life is certainly worth fighting for in all its mess.  Manhattan, as a deconstruction of the overtly political superheroes of yore, manifests a rather dire warning.  The world isn’t ordered, and the order we try to impose upon it through simple binary means of thinking predispose us only toward killing each other needlessly.

Tagged as: Cold War, Dr. Manhattan, Watchmen