The Past

"Those glorious days; that innocence... Dead?" (Chapter 8, Page 3, Panel 5)

Quite possibly one of these most pointed pieces of dialogue written by Alan Moore, this line exemplifies one of the main themes put forth in Watchmen. There is a distinct feeling of hopelessness in Watchmen, and this line from Tales from the Black Freighter illustrates that/ While some of the characters, like Veidt, try desperately to bring back a time where the world is unified and has hope, other characters accept that the world is corrupt but still try to do their own work to rid the world of evil, like Rorschach. Other characters still profess to feel hopeless and that the world is empty, but when it comes down to the clutch, they (like the majority of the human race) still finds some small piece of hope, like the newspaper vendor. Even Moore himself writes an ending where the "bad guy" wins (even though the bad guy was trying to save the world) and hope is lost by the anti-hero (Rorschach), but, the reader is left with the hope that the truth will still be exposed-- something most people see as the ultimate thing to hope for. Justice and truth.