Comic Books for Adults: Moral Development in Watchmen
Last year, I took a course on children’s literature which explored the purpose of fiction written for children aged 5 to 15. The class concluded that much of the literature for the younger end of this group was often didactic and described morality in black and white terms. Understanding this simple difference helps children begin to navigate their social worlds. As they master the basic levels, fiction advances, allowing for more complicated moral views and engaging adolescents in the varied motives behind action. Suddenly the distinctions between right, wrong, good, and evil are not so clear, yet this older audience is able to think about and choose their moral positions. I propose that the graphic novel Watchmen continues along the same trajectory, introducing further complexities for more developed minds. Despite its ostensibly juvenile medium, Watchmen is a moral exercise intended for adults. It presents us with six main characters, each with a different motivation behind his or her morality, and invites us to ally with or reject each one.
A helpful way of thinking about moral development can be found in the work of psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. He claimed that moral understanding and reasoning progressed through six distinct stages which were better equipped to assess more nuanced moral dilemmas. Based on an individual’s reasoning over a period of time, one can reliably place him or her in one of these stages. The first two stages are considered pre-moral. Motivations of children in these stages are fear of punishment and self-interest, respectively. The heroes of Watchmen are all adults and none should fit into either of these categories. Yet one clearly stands out with the motive of self-interest. While at one point The Comedian may have been fulfilling humanity’s need for a protector, he is most often depicted as having realized his own truth: no matter how much he helped humankind, they continued to breed more villains. The implication is that he regressed to this pre-moral stage and began to act exclusively in terms of self-interest, receiving some reward for his work. His vigilantism leads to service in the war, which gains him powerful friends and even immunity from the Keene Act, which made masked vigilantes illegal. The book is clear on The Comedian’s character. He may be profiting from his work, but he is a murderer and a rapist who deserves his ultimate fate. His story becomes a cautionary tale for adults who never develop past the moral stages of children.
The pre-moral stages are followed by the conventional levels. Kohlberg judged that moral reasoning for the majority of the adult population fell between these two stages. In the third stage, moral reasoning is motivation by a need for social approval, known as the “good boy/girl” motive. Many of Dan Dreiberg’s actions fall under this category. His retirement from his life as Nite Owl II is only partly motivated by respect for the law, but can also be attributed to his understanding of normal adult desires and ways of coping with the stresses of life. In chapter seven, he confesses that he “came down here for my costume…I dunno, I feel worried, confused…Ahh, you’re right. It’s a stupid mid-life crisis kind of idea (XII, 20).” He is ashamed of his dependence on his childish costume because he knows how other adults might see him. To maintain his mild-mannered, “good boy” image, he must comply with social norms. Later, when he decides to free Rorschach, he tells Laurie “I feel we have certain obligations to our fraternity (XII, 28).” He is no longer thinking of society, but he is still basing his reasoning on conformity, even if it is with a group non-conformists. His need to be accepted by a group is his primary motive.
Initially, Laurie represents the latter stage of this level, which is marked by a need to uphold the law and comply with those who enforce it. She is with Dr. Manhattan, not only because she has (or had) feelings for him, but also out of respect for the government which gave her freedom in the form of the Keene Act. Over dinner with Dan, she expresses discontentment with her life with “the military’s secret weapon”, saying “the only reason I’m kept around is to keep Jon relaxed and happy (I, 24).” The law helped her break away from the future that her mother laid out for her and, seeing that these laws help, she is compelled to act in their best interest. She is only convinced to help Dan free Rorschach when there is a chance that the laws do not have as much power as she thought.
The last stages assess the law as a tool which is meant to advance human welfare rather than in terms of the absolute end in moral enforcement. If the law is not doing what it is meant to, one fixes it of finds a new system. The latter stage is not based in law, but regards all human welfare as essential. Rorschach and Ozymandias, with their blatant disregard for laws and concepts of how to elevate humanity, fit into these last categories. Rorschach’s system of justice eliminates the moral transgressors to leave good people in the world, placing him in the sixth category. Ozymandias believes in the law, but seeing it fail to protect them from impending war requires him to use any means necessary to destroy a small part society for the greater good. Both resort to violent actions, but their moral reasoning represents a small step outside of conventional thinking.
Between these characters, it is difficult to decide whose course of action is best, given the many moral dilemmas that they each face. Adults are thought to be completely developed, but Watchmen functions as a way of promoting further moral development. While it is easy to dismiss this as comic book for adolescent boys, this graphic novel clearly has meaning for an adult audience.
Works Cited
Moore, Allen and Gibbons, Dave. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1986.
Works Consulted
Kohlberg, Lawrence. “The Development of Children’s Orientations Toward a Moral Order.” Human Development 2008, 51(1): 8-20
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This is a very “neat” paper—moving from your work in children’s literature to using Kohlberg’s stage theory allows you to rank order the superheroes of Watchman, in a way that puts their various moral positions in hierarchical relation to one another.
Where you get into trouble, of course, is in your finale, where you admit that “it is difficult to decide whose course of action is best.” The issue is that—while Kohlberg sees work on moral development as tracing the stages necessary for each of us to go through en route to adult development (and sees them as completed by the time we arrive @ adulthood), I’d say that Watchmen gives us six really unacceptable characters. Do you think so? Are you suggesting that the absence of a clear “winner” is the prod to further moral development for the adults who read this comic book? (Do you think we read it, looking for such instruction?)
Am I to assume, from reading your paper, that you “believe” Kohlberg’s theories, find them valid and useful as a means of thinking about how we live our lives and raise our children? Or that you are simply using them to perform the exercise of reading a text?
If you are a psych major, you probably know that Kohlberg’s stage theory has been heavily critiqued—not just by feminist theorists like Carol Gilligan who advocate for more “contextual” and “caring” modes (and place them in a sequence similar to Kohlberg’s), but also by a number of other critics who find the whole notion of chronological stages of development a limited or inaccurate way of thinking about moral development. See, for starters, Don Locke’s “Critique of Kohlberg’s Stage-Structural Theory of Moral Reasoning,” in the Journal of Moral Education, which critiques the ideas (1) that the stages constitute structural wholes; (2) their invariant sequence; (3) their cultural universality; (4) their logical necessity; (5) increasing cognitive adequacy; and (6) increasing moral adequacy.