Original artwork, not a still
And all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!”… and I’ll look down and whisper “No.”
— Watchmen • 1986
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
It is Rorschach in miniature: a man who sees the city as a sewer, himself as the only clean thing in it, and the coming reckoning as a judgement he will watch without mercy. Moore wrote it as a self-portrait the reader is meant to find both chilling and seductive, and the last sentence has become shorthand online for the refusal of an ungrateful crowd's plea.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for WatchmenShow the scene
This is the voice of Rorschach's journal, which opens Watchmen (issue #1, cover-dated September 1986) over images of the street where the Comedian's body has just been discovered. Walter Kovacs, the masked vigilante known as Rorschach, begins by noting that a comedian died in New York on Friday night and that somebody knows why. He then turns to what he sees as the city's rot and his place above it, ending on the cold refusal quoted here. The journal comes back at the end of the series: Rorschach mails it to the right-wing paper the New Frontiersman, and the final panels leave it at the top of the "crank file".
Sources (2)
- Wikiquote: WatchmenWalter Kovacs/Rorschach section, journal narrationReference checked
- Wikipedia: WatchmenLead; plot summaryReference checked
Context reviewed
