Over the past few posts, I’ve been examining how Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen explores our need for intimacy and human connections. With the specter of nuclear holocaust hanging over the world, we see individuals connect, showing the wide range of interactions from love and intimacy to disagreement. We see Malcolm and Gloria go through their arguments around Maclolm’s work which hurts their intimacy. We see Joey and Aline work to make their relationship work with their differing political views. We see Bernhard and Bernie sit next each everyday and finally introduce themselves to one another right before Adrian Veidt’s attack. Along with these interactions, we also see the connections between Laurie and Daniel and even between Sally and Edward Blake, even after he rapes her.

After Veidt attacks New York, killing countless individuals, Dr. Manhattan, Daniel, Laurie, and Rorschach debate whether or not to tell the world what happened. Veidt tells them they should keep quiet because exposing his plan would be “undoing the peace millions died for.” Dr. Manhattan agrees, telling the others, “Logically, I’m afriad he’s right. Exposing the 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.” Daniel asks, “How can humans make decisions like this? We’re damned if we stay quiet, Earth’s damned if we don’t.”

The only one that doesn’t agree with the decision to remain silent is Rorschach. He sees the world in clear, cut moral dichotomy of right and wrong, and he tells them that he will “never compromise” and leaves to tell the world about Veidt’s actions. Veidt leaves and Dr. Manhattan goes to stop Rorschach, leaving Daniel and Laurie alone. Laurie asks Daniel how everybody can just walk away from “all those bodies,” and Daniel tells her they need to go somewhere and talk. They go to the indoor pool and try to work through what has happened. Laurie tells Daniel that she needs him, and he says the same, sitting down on a rug with her and embracing her.

Laurie tells him, “I want you to love me. I want you to love me because we’re not dead.” Laurie and Daniel have been intimate before, but at this stage, they want to feel connected to one another because of what has happened. The first time they have sex they do it to connect as well, out of fear of what might happen; this time, they connect out of relief and sadness that while Veidt killed millions they survived. Laurie holds Daniel’s face and tells him to remove his goggles so she can see, taste, and smell him, because he can.

The final panel of this sequence is a horizontal panel at the bottom of the page. As the reader, we view the scene from across the pool, seeing Daniel and Laurie embrace beside the pool as their shadows appear as a silhouette on the wall behind them. The shadows resemble the graffitti of the embracing lovers, yet here we see them kissing one another, unlike the graffiti silhouette where the woman’s head is bent down towards the man’s chest. Amidst the pain, destruction, and confusion Daniel and Laurie connect with another, linking them together.

The coinciding page shifts to Rorschach outside of Veidt’s base and Dr. Manhattan telling him that he can’t allow Rorschach to tell the world what happened. The first panel here mirrors, in some ways, the last panel on the previous page with Laurie and Daniel. The panel shows a closeup of Rorschach’s face, and the ink-blot on his mask harkens back to the graffitti silhouette of the embracing lovers, Laurie and Daniel’s shadows, and the ink-blot that Malcolm shows him earlier, the one that makes him remember seeing his mother and the man in her bedroom. For Rorschah, that sexual connection invokes fear and anger, but here, connected with Daniel and Laurie, his mask takes on a different feeling, one of embracing lovers connecting with one another.

After Dr. Manhattan kills Rorschach, he returns to Veidt’s base and finds Daniel and Laurie curled up together, naked on a rug. He looks at them, and his face appears both sad and approving at the same time. His eyes look sad, but it also feels like a small smile is about to cross his face. It’s an image that taps into his sadness of not being Laurie, due in part to his lack of connection with others, and his happiness that she has found someone to love and connect with.

Before the final scene, Laurie and Daniel, in disguise, visit Sally in California. During their conversation, Laurie tells her mom that she knows Edward Blake was actually her father. Sally apologizes for not telling her daughter about this, and she explains that she “tried to be angry” after he raped her, but that he stopped by one afternoon and they conceived Laurie. Laurie hugs her mother, crying as she says, “People’s lives take them strange places. They do strange things, and well, sometimes they can’t talk about them.” Laurie came to tell Sally she knows and that she doesn’t blame her for anything.

When Laurie and Daniel leave, Sally pulls the curtains to, grabs the picture of the Minutemen and, as she cries, kisses Edward Blake. The last panel shows her lipstick kiss on Blake’s face as we see her turned towards the wall on the bed holding her face in her hands as she cries. If Sally and Edward didn’t have consensual sex on that afternoon, Laurie wouldn’t be here. As Dr. Manhattan told Laurie on Mars, the statistical chances of one of millions of sperm joining with one egg makes the chances of everyone’s existence astronomical, inconceivable. The connection between individuals leads to the “miracles.” The connections between individuals lead to humanity. The connections between individuals bind us together, providing a way for us to move forward and confront our fears.

Watchmen is much, much more than a superhero narrative that interrogates superheros or a Cold War narrative that explores the fears of nuclear holocaust. Watchmen interrogates what it means for us to be human and for us to have intimate connections with one another. It’s a text that shows us the importance of these connections and how they make our lives better. There’s still so much more to examine here, but I will leave it here. What are your thoughts? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.