Thursday, June 28, 2012

Watchmen: Chapter VI - page 28

PAGE 28

Panel 2:  The “crude sexual insults” toward Dr. Long from his wife mirrors the similarly crude insults we can infer Rorschach received in Chapter II, Page 25 as he cruised through the red light district and did not respond to the prostitute’s propositions, just as Dr. Long had stopped responding to his wife’s propositions.  These two are now more alike than Dr. Long might like to admit.

Panel 3:  Note that the pain killers Dr. Long has been taking have a typical warning at the bottom – “Caution: Do Not Exceed Stated Dose” – and from what we have seen throughout this issue, it is easy to assume Dr. Long has been regularly exceeding the stated dose. 

Panel 5:  Dr. Long’s description of what he sees in this “butterfly” Rorschach blot is evidence of the transformation he has undergone in this chapter, a transformation symbolized by the presence of this “butterfly” blot. 

The grubs he describes in the caption, “frantically tunneling away from the light,” are symbolic of the populace at large, and of Randy and Diane and his wife, specifically.  They were the ones who asked him about “weird” and “kinky” things that Rorschach may have shared with him, but when Dr. Long revealed the truth of what Rorschach told him, with the all too real horrors inherent with the story, they were reviled by it and pulled away, just as the grubs did in the dead cat Dr. Long saw so long ago.

Panel 8:  And we fall, along with Dr. Long, into the dark abyss that has been gazing back at him, and us, throughout this entire chapter.

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