Lack Of Punctuality In Alan Moore's Watchmen

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Watchmen’s Lack of Punctuality Postmodern literature techniques reflect on many works of the 20th century. Coming from modernist literature, postmodernism begins to focus on contemporary ideology like phones, computers, and television that is currently enveloping today’s society. Every day, people are seen talking on the cellphone with their grandmother before they transition to watching television with their children, completely void with what is happening outside their windows and within their city streets. With this new advance in technology, Alan Moore’s graphic novel, Watchmen spotlights this change from real-time events to a digital reality. In Watchmen, a member of a group of city vigilantes of sorts has just died. As many of the …show more content…

Manhattan does not feel the same connection to technology as most humans do now that he has turned into a ‘super-being.’ Jon Osterman had his whole life ahead of him and after his transformation he lost contact with everybody he loved. He does not need a cell phone or need to watch television to be updated on the news because he can basically predict the future. These complicated things make him forget that less complicated things are important as well. At the beginning of chapter four, Dr. Manhattan narrates: “It’s October 1985. I’m on Mars. It’s July 1959. I’m in New Jersey, at the Palisades amusement park” (Moore 111). Moore has Dr. Manhattan speak in the present tense, even if he is talking about events in the past or future, showing that Dr. Manhattan has no sense of time. Jon Osterman is no longer acquainted with human life, as to him Earth is only a tiny blot in the universe. As his transformation happened, Jon held onto a watch which grants him the ability to travel through time. His view of time is not linear, so his views of human nature are irrelevant to him which explains why Jon only cares for himself. Along with Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach is a character that can cut through all the nonsense and put his morals above

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