His futile attempts to fight sin in clear-cut blacks and whites have confused his very identity, and the inexplicably morphing blacks and whites seem to fight to become gray on his mask (his “face”). A and The Question, personifications of a Manichaean version of Objectivism, Rorschach tends to punish criminals without mercy, driven farther into despair by the rape and slaughter of a little girl. Like Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese’s and Paul Schrader’s Taxi Driver, Rorschach admires the good so much, loves love so much, he has died to the good and love he is drowning in the same sewer he wishes to cleanse and hates hate instead of feeling love at all.
Modelled after Steve Ditko’s Ayn Rand-inspired Mr. For me, the most sympathetic character in Alan Moore’s graphic-novel masterpiece, Watchmen, is Rorschach: a gritty, psychologically conflicted, fedora- and trench coat-clad vigilante who hides his face with an inkblot-printed mask (hence his alias).
