The Pirate Comic Symbol Analysis

The pirate comic is a comic within the novel, which an unnamed, incidental character reads throughout the course of the main story. The pirate comic symbolizes how someone who initially seems the hero of a story may actually become a villain. The pirate comic parallels the major arcs of the main story of Watchmen, forming a microcosm of several key moments. In the comic, the unnamed narrator (the survivor) endures a pirate attack and washes up on an island, believing that the pirates will now sail for his hometown and slaughter his family as well. The survivor commits many despicable acts to beat the pirates there, only to mistakenly murder his own wife, believing her to be a pirate and himself a righteous avenger. The survivor believes he is on an urgent mission to save his family, which drives him to gradually let go of his inhibitions and commits successively more grotesque acts. This reflects the way that Rorschach and especially Adrian Veidt allow the perceived urgency of their respective missions to drive them to worse and worse behaviors. Rorschach tortures, maims, and kills to track down his “mask-killer” and unearth what he believes to be a conspiracy. Veidt, believing he must avert World War III and human extinction, rationalizes murdering millions of people in New York. Although the novel avoids making a judgment on whether Veidt’s actions are justified, the story’s ending leaves the reader, like the survivor in the pirate comic, wondering if it was all worth it.