Monday, June 01, 2009

God

I read a piece of a review of "Watchmen" that argued that the theme of the book was what it means to be God.

There's a quote in the book from some military guy or something after Jon's accident that says, "There is a God, and he's American." And Jon does have some godlike powers, including the ability to see and travel through time and space, survive on Mars, give Laurie some kind of force field, get disintegrated and still survive, etc.

And then we have Veidt, who is certainly playing God in his attempt to manipulate world politics by sacrificing millions of lives.

Thoughts?
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2 comments:

kc said...

Strange.

Veidt seems more like an egomaniacal control freak than like God, but I suppose some would say there's no difference.

Dr. Manhattan is godlike in some of his powers and the way he experiences time at all at once, but I think of God as having emotion (like Jesus) — of being able to get really angry or being able to show enormous love and compassion, which Dr. Manhattan can't do.

Didn't Dr. Manhattan make some comment to Laurie about how he regards humanity and international conflict as we regard the differences between red ants and black ants? (But my conception of God is that he would side with the most awesome ants and let them inherit the earth).

12:53 PM, June 02, 2009
Ben said...

I don't see it -- I think the line about Jon being a god is kind of a flippant way to point out how small-minded people can be.

The book affirms the strength and weakness of humans all at once -- the strength to destroy and the weakness to be destroyed. There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but it's very human -- and even Jon, who is superhuman, is not supernatural.

3:04 PM, June 02, 2009

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