Watchmen

Rorschach is with a psychiatrist, who is administering a Rorschach test by asking him what he sees in a series of ink blots. In the first, he sees a dead dog, but tells the therapist he sees a butterfly. The doctor is disturbed by him, but confident: “nevertheless, I’m convinced I can help him. No problem is beyond the grasp of a good psychoanalyst, and they tell me I’m very good. Good with people” (179). He shows Rorschach another picture, which flashes him back to his childhood, when he walks in on his mother having sex with a man for money. When the man stiffs her on account of the intrusion, his mother viciously slaps him; Rorschach, in the present, says he sees flowers. Pleased with the day’s progress, the doctor sends Rorschach back to the cell block, where prisoners taunt Rorschach and promise revenge for what he has done to them. In his cell, Rorschach thinks about being a child, with other kids on the street calling him “whoreson,” until he snaps and stubs one of the boys’ cigarettes in his own eye, partially blinding him. The psychiatrist reviews the file at night, noticing that Rorschach only said “good” when he learned of his mother’s murder. The doctor’s wife wonders if the doctor is safe dealing with such a patient, but he assures her that “it’s just that he’s withdrawn and depressed, and I really feel I can guide him out of it” (186).

At their next meeting, the doctor asks “Walter” to talk about Rorschach. Rorschach hates being called by his actual name but agrees to tell him. Working in a garment factory, Walter had an order to make a white dress with black spots that shifted around. The customer cancelled the order, and two years later, Walter was reminded of her when she appeared on the front page of the newspaper, having been murdered in front of her apartment building while neighbors did nothing—and even watched. He cut off a piece of the dress and made from it “a face that [he] could bear to look at in the mirror” (188).

Rorschach accuses the doctor (Malcolm Long) of taking interest in him only because he’s notorious, but Dr. Long dismisses the story and the insult as “misdirected aggression.” Rorschach hurls hot cooking oil at a man trying to stab him in the chow line, while at home, Dr. Long inadvertently uses the name “Rorschach” and tries to focus on the case while his wife insists that he put work aside and be with her. Meeting again with Dr. Long, Rorschach describes how when he started, he was “very soft” and not yet truly Rorschach, while admiring The Comedian for his commitment to doing what had to be done. Trying to break through, Dr. Long shows him another ink blot, the same as before, and Rorschach this time says, “dead dog.” Rorschach recounts that in 1975, while investigating the kidnapping of a young girl, he discovered that the two dogs in the backyard were chewing on human bones. He killed both dogs with a cleaver, and at that moment, “it was Kovacs who closed his eyes, and Rorschach who opened them again” (199). When the kidnapper returned home, Rorschach threw the dog carcasses through the windows, handcuffed the man to a fixture, and set the house on fire. As the house burned, he realized that “existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long” (204).

As fears of nuclear war continue to spread, Dr. Long ruins a dinner party by relating Rorschach’s story about the girl and the dogs, and at home, he stares into an ink blot until he sees only blackness.

The chapter ends with a collection of files on Kovacs, including a police report on Rorschach’s arrest, where he denies killing Moloch but admits to the other two murders of which he is suspected. The files also include a summary of his childhood from the New York State Psychiatric Hospital. It describes how his father abandoned him shortly before he was born and that his birth likely compelled his mother into sex work. After being taken into state custody, he proved a capable student and mostly got along with his peers. Offering insights into his mental state, the file includes two pieces Kovacs wrote as a child. The first is about his parents, although he mostly discusses the father he never knew and wonders if he was an important agent for Harry Truman or perhaps died during the war. Another recounts a dream in which a man was reaching his arm down his mother’s throat, and the two fused into one another, “dancing sidewards towards me in the dark hall like a crab” (210). He sees pants and underwear wrapped around their feet, and as they approach him, he wakes up, upset and ashamed.