THINQon : Watchmen - Chapter 4: Watchmaker

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Arthur Mont

Watchmen - Chapter 4: Watchmaker

Latest Post: April 20, 2009 at 8:26 PM

72 followers

I wanted to read 2 minutes but I just couldn’t stop. A beautiful chapter. The book is getting better by the chapter. I think he is understanding more and more what he wants to do. Comments:

4-3-6 There is no need for watch makers, but there will be for watchmen. The watchmen come instead of the watchmakers – instead of keeping time. Hence we also hope they can stop the doomsday clock.

4-4-3 Even a Genius couldn’t figure out women. Jon still thinks it’s just because he was human. As we know from before, also being a semi-god doesn’t help.

4-5-3 Janey appears, immediately after the penis reappearing in 4-5-2. But then now, he sees the future as déjà-vu.

4-5-5 Jon says: “other people seem to make all my moves for me.”

4-6-9 Time stops with love, and passion. This is discussed very nicely in Chris' Passion, Love, and the disappearance of time .

4-7-8 Janey is the one yelling oh god let me out of here, not Jon.

4-8-4 - obviously significant image. Also reminds me of a Rorschach picture. Why is the light taking him to pieces? What is its significant. (perhaps not connected, but speaking about Light .) Notice how bright the page is while other pages are much darker.

4-10-4 yes William, also reminds me of a hindu god.

4-10-5 Sunburn in November – the world order is changing.

4-11-9 Jon lies. Lies because he knows he won’t always want her? Is there a difference?

4-12 discussion on a symbol – this is an old trick of self reference. Kinda like what the author thinks about finding a symbol, ways to sell etc.

4-12-1 This circle/mirror/eye constantly repeats in the book.

4-13-2 Jon can control Atomic structure.

William you mentioned the Charm and Strange quarks. One can perhaps say here, to give a physical interpretation, that Jon can control the atomic structure but not more refined than that. He can control matter in a way, but the charm and strange, like love, he has no control about.

4-13-8 Janey mentions how Jon was wearing a double breasted suit, which reminds us of course of the story in chapter 1 of Moe Vernon and his fake breasts.

4-14-2 The morality of Jon’s action in fighting crime, in killing, escapes him.

4-15-6 Like Hollis says Doc’s appearance changes every fabric of our being, not simply fighting crime, but everything changes. Hollis, we, become futile. Hollis says this in the written part of chapter 3.

4-16 notice the Dali clocks (paintings) on the wall. How time melts. Jon can’t control the future but he sees it. He was lying to her (about always being with her), or was he?

4-16-3 The strangeness and the charm – he doesn’t get it. Yes, he can see what’s happening, but he doesn’t understand people.

4-18-3 Jon looks like a little kid.

4-19-1 Why didn’t he ever tell his father he was Jon, alive not dead. Why didn’t he want his father to know about him?

4-19-3 Why is Nixon asking him, while Kennedy wouldn’t? Of course everyone likes Kennedy, and very few Nixon.

4-22-6 a picture of Jesus.

Time – How does it feel to live knowing the future? Notice Jon doesn’t know everything, he doesn’t recognize moloch, doesn’t know Dreiberg (maybe), he doesn’t know many thing, but he does know his entire life. That’s a strange way to live. He wants to escape time, but also is building a clock on Mars. There is something soothing in the passing of time, the clicking of the seconds, which gives thing structure; which creates things.

End of painted part of chapter 4.

Written part – Is Doc Manhattan the cure or the disease? Does he bring world peace or would he cause war and even world annihilation?

Books Discussed

Watchmen
by Dave Gibbons Alan Moore

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:

Robert Percy

in "Rules and maybe we can't break them"

(The Living Room)

Reply to:

William Sanguine

April 14, 2009 at 10:43 PM

16 followers

This chapter is full of watches.

First of all, watches are about time. Jon's memory and prescience figure prominently in the chapter. He can perceive the future but not change it, so time for him is gently inexorable; 4-6-6 "events mesh together with soft precision." Jon also changes gradually over time, and his change is most obvious in his appearance. The less he feels connected to humanity, the less clothing he wears. Why should a god respect social norms? And then he will say things like "more would have suffered during a riot, I'm certain" (4-22-6), casually disowning his responsibility for two deaths. Or his conviction that Laurie would "like it here" on Mars, because she values her privacy..

Second, watches are about watchmakers. On 4-2-7 Jon says "I am trying to give a name to the force that set them [the stars] in motion." On 4-27-3 he asks "who makes the world." His conclusion is that 4-11-7 "I don't think there is a god, Janey. If there is, I'm not him." On 4-28-5 he refers to a "makerless mechanism." But by the end of the chapter he is performing an act of creation. Adrian Veidt is also a creator, though he creates (or at least modifies) life, whereas Jon creates lifeless matter. Adrian's cat, Bubastis, is named after an Egyptian city that honored the cat goddess, Bast. The phrase "his eyes are sad and knowing" makes me worry for some reason.

other stuff:

I think I missed somehow what destroys Gila Flats? It's shown to be destroyed at the end of chapter 3, but it's still around as of 4-13-5. Was it bombed intentionally, to destroy the intrinsic field device?

4-12-2 costume as a marketing device.

4-18 the interleaving device with the vertical columns is interesting. It allows the author to make the stories truly simultaneous, rather than alternating panels from each. (They don't occur at the same time in the story, but perhaps Jon is thinking about them simultaneously.) To create this effect, the author just had to use two columns instead of three (as on 1-3 or 2-2.)

note Dr. M's lotus position

Reply to: or

Jonathan Clark, It's a question mark.

April 15, 2009 at 3:48 AM

3 followers

William, though I agree that Ozymandias is related to Egypt, and the Egyptian gods, I didn't understand him as creating the altered Lynx. It seemed one more thing which was enabled by Doctor Manhattan (4-21-4). It is true that seeing his passion for the Egyptians he probably had something to do with the creation of the Lynx, and with evolving it (which reminds me of your recent post on The Second Sex) but to actually call it something he created seems to me to take it too far, even if I agree on the principle of it.

You said: "Jon also changes gradually over time, and his change is most obvious in his appearance. The less he feels connected to humanity, the less clothing he wears."
I like the idea, and perhaps the author had this in mind later on, but look at 1-(20-23). That entire time Doc is naked.
He is wearing clothes in 4-12-8, and 4-18-6, though he is alone with Janey Slater, so there is something in what you say.

Good point of Gila Flats.

Reply to: or

Edna Stern

April 20, 2009 at 8:26 PM

87 followers

Hi everyone,

I just finished the chapter and what I noticed the most here is that everything is dropping : the photograph dropping from his hand in the first two pages, in page 12 “it’s all getting out of my hands”.

In the 3rd page notice 4-3-3 the newspaper about the Dropped Atomic Bomb (also in 4-12-8). In 4-3-4 the father is preparing to drop the cogs of the watch 4-3-7, the meteorite drop on Mars on 4-3-8 and the last picture of the same page holds a feeling of failure, even if he went to Princeton and got a PhD in atomic physics, it sounds like he let things get out of his hands against his will.

I agree with Arthur about 4-8-4, it is a reminder to Rorschach. Also makes me think of Pollock, there is a lot of movement in that picture.

Page 9 where he’s growing back I thought is very cute. A bit like seeing a baby shape of life, at the beginning he looks more like a tree or a medusa until he finds himself in 4-10-4.

The lying in 4-11-9 is I think connected to the falling-dropping, the things that you know will happen sometime and over which you have no control, not even Jon.