Bas Dijt
10035729
The Usage of Possible Worlds in Watchmen
BA English Language and Culture
Supervisor: J. Goggin
WS 2016
2 Aug 2017
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
1. Why Possible World Theory? 6
2. The History of Graphic Novels and a Summary of Watchmen 8 3. Possible World Theory Explained: Its History and Terminology 14
3.1 Bradley and Swartz 15
3.2 Marie-Laure Ryan 22
3.3 Umberto Eco 29
4. Text Worlds in Watchmen 34
5. Possible World Analysis 39
5.1 Type-1 PW 41
5.2 Type-2 PW 50
5.3 Type-3 PW 52
6. Conclusion 55
Introduction
In 1986 DC released a twelve-part series that would change the way comics are perceived. Watchmen was the first graphic novel to receive the prestigious Hugo Award in the category “Other Forms” in 1988. Up until that point, the Hugo Award, that is known to be "among the highest honors bestowed in science fiction and fantasy writing,” specialized only in categories all related to prose works,; ranging from Best Novel to Best Fan Writer. Although the board in 1988 had made a one-time-only exception to include another “Other Forms” category in order to include works such as Watchmen, it was not until 2009 that a “Best Graphic Story” category was permanently added in order to accommodate graphic novels, which have only become more prevalent over the course of time (Kellog).
Watchmen had a profound impact on the world of comic books, and is one of the two titles (the
other being Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns) commonly associated with the end of the so-called “Bronze Age” of comics, and the beginning of the current “Modern Age,” also known as the “Dark Age of Comic Books,” due to the change to a darker tone that distinguishes the Modern Age from preceding ages. "The bleak tone and ideas of Watchmen - particularly the notion that superheroes can be bad, or at least horribly flawed people - seeped into and spread around the genre” (Calia).
Despite its popularity, not all critics welcomed the change towards a darker tone in comic books, which has not only spread its influence within its respective genre but has recently also been adopted by filmmakers. “The grim legacy of Watchmen can be found in superhero movies as well. Zack Snyder, who directed a film adaptation of Moore and Gibbon’s work, has injected the Watchmen style of super-hero deconstruction into his big-budget Superman movies Man of Steel and Batman v Superman:
Dawn of Justice, an approach that divided fans and critics” (Calia).
Aside from a dramatic change in comic book tone, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, upon creating
Alison Sagara argues in the introduction to her honors thesis Graphic Narrative Theory: Comics
Story-telling in Watchmen: "Given Watchmen’s privileged position in the emerging canon of graphic novels,
it makes sense that the text should be studied from the vantage points afforded by contemporary literary theory” (7). Aside from having dialog and prose that is reminiscent of canonical literature in tone, use of rhetorical tropes and figures and so on, Watchmen also features a multi-layered narrative with a large cast of characters. In each of its twelve chapters, a different (set of) character(s) is highlighted, and the story is told through him/her or them. Additionally, the last few pages of every chapter is written in prose in the form of letters or book excerpts. Through these prose sections, the reader is provided with background information about the world of Watchmen and its characters. It is due to this formal, stylis-tic and themastylis-tic complexity that Watchmen lends itself to an analysis of the properties that make it a complex work.
Before elaborating on the goal and purpose of this thesis I would like to present an observation made by Darko Suvin in “The Performance Text as Audience-Stage Dialog Inducing a Possible World”. Here, Suvin, states that “fictional events are imaginable as forming a coherent action and story only because the imaginary states of affairs presented by the letter of the text, and by which fic-tive human relationships are parabolically signified, constitute possible worlds” (Suvin 2). To explain this presupposition further, Suvin adds that the vehicle for the general signification of a text is its plot. He then explains that, in order to comprehend any sequence of actions, these actions have to be read in terms of temporality (in what Suvin, following Bakhtin, calls chronotopes): a space-time change. The so-called chronotopic frame is then comprised of both changes in spatio-temporal location and changes in agential relationships, and “implies a general, meaning-bestowing frame of relationships, both posed and presupposed” (Suvin, 2). This chronotopic frame is then, according to Suvin a possible world.
Suvin’s argument is an interesting one, whereby any text that recounts fictional events inherently generates possible worlds. In this thesis, therefore, I will show how possible worlds are presented in
Watchmen, which may be identified using possible world theory. In doing so, I will point out narrative
strategies that come to light with the identification of these possible worlds. I will also address the question of what information on the over-arching structure of Watchmen may be derived from the iden-tification of possible worlds in its narrative.
For my analysis I will also draw on Umberto Eco’s possible world typology, in which he subdi-vides the term into three forms. The first form is a possible world that contains the entire fictional land-scape in which the narrative takes place. The second type is comprised of possible worlds that are imagined by the characters in the narrative. And finally, the third form reflects on possible worlds that are imagined by the model reader. In analyzing Watchmen’s narrative based on these properties I claim that the creation of possible worlds can be seen as a narrative strategy in and of itself, which leads the reader back to the work for multiple readings. Another question to be answered in this thesis is whether or not there is a correlation between a work inviting multiple readings and its structure, and could [PW] theory help to explain this phenomenon through illuminating PWs that are neither approved nor disap-proved by the reader upon a secondary reading in terms of its truth or falsity?
1 Why Possible World Theory?
Where PW theory is concerned, one might question its application in the context of a graphic novel such as Watchmen. One possible answer is that through PW theory a reader may gain a wider under-standing of Watchmen’s narrative structure. In the process one might even speculate on some of the choices that the authors Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons have made, and ask for example, why a partic-ular PW is found in a distinct part of the story.
One could certainly claim that Watchmen is a fictional narrative (with some exceptions such as historical events that are shared between both the fictional and the real world). However, Watchmen’s world is endowed with a complexity similar to our own, and an inquiry into its nature would arguably prove to be worthwhile.
As David Lewis states in the opening paragraph of his Truth in Fiction on arguing for the impor-tance of researching fictional characters (in this case Sherlock Holmes):
“For one thing, is there not a perfectly good sense in which Holmes, like Nixon is a real-life person of flesh and blood? There are stories about the exploits of super-heroes from other plan-ets, hobbits, fires and storms, vaporous intelligences, and other nonpersons. But what a mistake it would be to class the Holmes stories with these! Unlike Clark Kent et al. Sherlock Holmes is just a person — a person of flesh and blood, a being in the very same category as Nixon” (37).
I would not whole-heartedly agree with Lewis’s renouncement of “Clark Kent et al” as subjects wor-thy of analysis, since in this thesis I am concerned with the world-creating properties of superhero char-acters, whom I believe possess human qualities, and can therefore be classed as persons akin to Nixon. I do however agree with Lewis’ notion of regarding characters in fictional stories as persons of flesh
and blood and I wish to take the fictional events in Watchmen seriously, as if they were non-fictional events. With PW research on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s work I hope to shed light upon elements in its narrative that may have not yet come to light.
That said, however, serious research on PW Theory on Watchmen already exists. For example, in Saraga’s honors thesis Graphic Narrative Theory: Comics Storytelling in Watchmen, she explores a variety of narrative theories and applies them to Watchmen, and sets out to “lay further groundwork for what Gardner and Herman refer to as graphic narrative theory (7)”. In this thesis however, the emphasis will not be put on providing more work on a graphic narrative theory, but rather I will focus on PW theory and its application in unraveling a deeper structure within a graphic novel, while asking why PW creation feels more deliberate in a graphic novel.
2. The History of Graphic Novels and a Summary of Watchmen
Before delving into an analysis of PW theory and Watchmen, I will to briefly explain the history of the genre. While the application of PW theory is, of course, not limited to graphic novels, one could argue that, in this genre, a level of complexity can be reached that the comic strips intended for younger audi-ences rarely match. One could however, with a fair degree of certainty, argue that graphic novels are among the more likely types of fiction to lend itself to complex story arcs that feature multiple worlds, and provide a sense of density not found in, for example, popular super hero comics such as early Su-perman releases.
But how did graphic novels come to be? According to Paul Levitz, former president of DC comics, in his ‘Eisner and the Secret History of the Graphic Novel’ the genre’s pioneer is Will Eisner, although Eisner was not the first to use the term graphic novel as a descriptor of his own work. Accord-ing to Levitz his use of the term can be seen as a turnAccord-ing point in this genre’s respective history. Eisner started applying the term not only to his own work but also to older publications such as Lynd Ward’s woodcut novels. A notable example of Ward’s work is the 1934 rendition of Mary Shelley’s
Franken-stein. This was basically an illustrated version of the novel featuring Ward’s woodcut illustrations,
ac-companied by prose from the original Frankenstein. This rendition did, however, combine two media that were at the time separate: that of the novel and the illustration. The term graphic novel therefore seems more than applicable to Ward’s work.
One of the pioneering graphic novels appeared in the 1950s when St John Publications released their so-called ‘picture novels’, the first being It Rhymes with Lust by Arnold Drakes and Leslie Waller. As reviews on this work state, this graphic novel is “more curio than classic” (Raiteri 65). Content-wise the story resembles that of a B-movie. What set It Rhymes with Lust apart from contemporary releases, however, was the fact that this was one of the first longer comic books that dealt with adult themes
such as sex, alcoholism and violence. The inclusion of these themes would pave the way for other as-piring graphic novelists to release their material (Raiteri 65).
One aspiring individual in the history of the genre was the aforementioned Will Eisner, who pub-lished his first self-proclaimed graphic novel, A Contract with God which made a considerable impact on the creative community in 1978. It had little to no commercial success but was critically acclaimed. “This was adult literature in the best sense: looking at life, death, and the choices human beings make in their journeys. Whether Eisner was successful or not, readers will have to judge, but he would not toss off the stories of his tenement dwellers to get a simple laugh — not without adding the grace notes of tragedy as well” (Levitz). Eisner’s work was therefore considered to be a major leap forward in the graphic novel’s progress towards becoming a known term in literature.
The term graphic novel, in its most common use today refers to a comic book that appears in two forms: either an original comic released in book form or a bundled work that was previously serialized.
Watchmen belongs to the latter category, given that it was first released by DC comics as a twelve-part
Maxi-series. The most apparent distinction between graphic novels and other genres of comic books is its emphasis on a greater ambition in terms of story-telling although greater length and page count is not exclusive to graphic novels, given that there are numerous examples of book-form comics that do not have the density that is usually attributed to this genre. One famous European example is Hergé’s
Tintin comics, which certainly span a great length of story in each issue, yet they are generally
consid-ered to be light-hearted adventures. American examples include special editions of various super hero comics, such as the 1976 unison project between Marvel and DC of Superman VS Spiderman. This project was enormous and spanned over ninety-six pages in tabloid format. While both of these exam-ples undeniably pushed the conventional boundaries of comic books, it is still debatable whether or not they can be considered graphic novels given that their content does not fall in with generic expecta-tions.
Then what determines whether or not a text may be classified as a graphic novel? As demon-strated with the example of It Rhymes with Lust, it is the inclusion of adult themes that are not found in conventional popular comic books, which usually cater to a younger audience. In 1977 a magazine en-titled Heavy Metal was released, which introduced readers to artwork and comics of a more serious na-ture. This magazine also granted its audience insight into other countries, such as Japan, and their cul-tures where comic books had already attained a more distinguished status. Heavy Metal featured the first Japanese manga (a Japanese word that refers both to comics and the art of creating them) to be re-leased on American shores. One might argue that, as time went on and more attempts were made at ele-vating the literary status of comic books though the medium of the graphic novel, the more daring the graphic novelists that followed in the footsteps of Eisner and others became.
In the 1980s, three game-changing graphic novels were released on the American comic book market. The first was Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, the second Art Spiegelman’s Maus and the third, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen. Watchmen’s conception is directly related to the popularity of super hero comics and may, in a sense, be regarded as a form of commentary on this genre. What would happen if superheroes actually existed and lived in our own world? This is a ques-tion that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons tried to answer in their work. Although this is an interesting premise in and of itself, its execution is what I will focus on within the body of this essay. In order to provide more clarity on the contents of Watchmen, I will briefly outline the plot of this graphic novel.
As just noted, Watchmen concerns itself with a seemingly simple premise of super heroes existing in the real world. The universe in which Watchmen takes place follows an alternate history of our own. Unlike most other superhero comics of the time, Watchmen portrays its heroes in a realistic fashion. For example, all but one of these superheroes are merely people in costumes who possess no supernatu-ral powers. Moreover, the story follows a group of retired superheroes who had previously worked in a team called the Minutemen (and later the Crimebusters). Through snippets of fictional history that the
book provides in its so called Under the Hood sections it becomes clear that superheroes began to ap-pear around the same time that superhero comic books became popular in our own factual world. How-ever, in the world of Watchmen, these superheroes were real, and that world seemed to rely on these vigilantes for quite some time until they eventually fell out of fashion. Ultimately, an act was passed in 1977 that banned all vigilante activity by law. At the start of the novel, there are but a few superheroes active (such as the character Rorschach) whereas most of them have retired.
In the following section I will recapture the key events of Watchmen’s plot. Watchmen’s narrative commences when a man gets thrown off a building, where after Rorschach discovers this man’s iden-tity through an investigation of his apartment. They discover that the victim was a superhero named the Comedian, who was, like Rorschach a former member of the Minutemen. A whodunit scenario ensues, wherein Rorschach acts as a detective as he takes notes and traverses Watchmen’s world in search of the murderer, who at this point could very well be one of the other former Minutemen. The remainder of the story then progresses through segments centered on individual members of the former Minute-men. Subsequently, each chapter usually focuses on one (former) superhero in particular.
Watchmen contains several major events that significantly change the course of the narrative. One
of these events is Dr. Manhattan’s departure from earth. He (Dr. Manhattan) is a blue omnipotent su-perhero who usually goes unclothed, and is an important figure in keeping tension between Russia and the United States to a minimum. Dr. Manhattan flees the earth upon having been framed into thinking his presence had inflicted cancer on two individuals who had played a key role in his life. In his flight, he sets out to settle on our neighboring planet Mars where he materializes a crystal palace. After this event, Rorschach eventually teams up with two other former superheroes, Niteowl and the Silk Specter, and they continue to pursue the Comedian’s murderer. The Silver Specter, who was a former lover of Dr. Manhattan, gets teleported to Mars, where Dr. Manhattan reveals that he can see into the future and past as one, and no longer wishes to intervene in human affairs. Dr. Manhattan has psychologically
transcended humanity and no longer sees the point of intervention on their behalf. Silk Specter eventu-ally persuades him to care about humanity again, but to a limited degree. However, back on earth, Rorschach and Niteowl, in their continuing investigation, discover that one of their former superhero comrades, Ozymandias, who is also dubbed ‘the smartest man on earth’, was behind everything from the start; from the Comedian’s murder to Dr. Manhattan’s departure and numerous other events. The two superheroes confront Ozymandias in his Antarctic lair, where he uncovers his ultimate plan: the creation of an artificial space monster that will plummet to the ground in New York, exploding itself in the process. This explosion would then destroy a significant part of the city, kill millions of people, and scatter alien body parts around its crash site. The nations of the world would then be under the impres-sion that there is an alien invaimpres-sion, and face this common threat by working together. This would then, according to Ozymandias, lead to world peace. Niteowl proceeds to question Ozymandias as to whether he will really carry out this diabolical plan, to which he famously remarks: “Do it? Dan, I’m not a re-public serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago” (Moore 468).
A final showdown between Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan ensues (who materializes on the scene together with Silk Specter), with both sides remaining unharmed. The characters eventually come to an agreement of sorts, as they are confronted as a result of Ozymandias’ scheme: newscasts proving that world peace has indeed been achieved. Ozymandias pleads with the party to keep silent about the truth in order to uphold this newly-found world peace. Rorschach however openly refuses to keep the secret to himself and, as a consequence of his noncompliance; Dr. Manhattan is forced to kill Rorschach. Dr. Manhattan has a last conversation with Ozymandias:
OZYMANDIAS: “Jon, wait, before you leave…I did the right thing didn’t I? It all worked out in the end.”
DR. MANHATTAN: “In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian, nothing ever ends” (Moore 402).
The narrative ends in uncertainty, where the last panel shows Rorschach’s notebook in which all the events up until the Antarctic showdown are documented, appearing in a news office. Upon its eventual publication the truth behind the world events is revealed and Ozymandias is exposed. The notebook is put on a pile of stories that are under review for publication, and whether or not its contents will ever see the light of day is then again uncertain. However, the words of Dr. Manhattan ring on in this seg-ment, as it becomes clear that nothing ever ends, and that this story will continue beyond the pages of the narrative.
3. Possible World Theory Explained: Its History and Terminology
Before opening a discussion of PW theory, Watchmen, and graphic novels in general, I will provide an overview of PW theory, its history, and discuss specific strands of PW theory to be used in my analy-sis. Upon researching numerous sources on PW theory I found Raymond Bradley and Norman Swartz’s Possible Worlds: An Introduction to Logic and its Philosophy, which is arguably one of the most extensive works on PW theory to date. Swartz and Bradly offer the uninitiated reader an overview of PW theory as well as basic logical concepts. More contemporary scholars such as Darko Suvin and Umberto Eco tend to steer away from logic-based approaches to PW, and are more concerned with the theory’s application to literature. However, the initiator of PW is commonly said to be Leibniz who, approximately three hundred years ago, arguing that: “although our world contains much that is evil, it is nonetheless the best of all possible worlds” (Bradley and Swartz XV). Consequently, this notion of the existence of PWs in general has become commonplace within some branches of contemporary phi-losophy (Bradley and Swartz XV). In the second half of the twentieth century PW theory developed into a means of solving problems within formal semantics. The philosophers responsible for this change in scope and approach, namely Kripke, Lewis, Hintakka, Plantinga, were the founders of the analytic school.
3.1 Bradley and Swartz
As previously noted, Bradley and Swartz provide a detailed overview of PW theory and I will condense some of their preliminary observations in what follows here. Furthermore, in any analysis of PW in the context of Watchmen I will borrow Bradley and Swartz’s terminology. First however, I will briefly dis-cuss the relation between PW theory and logic.
Logic as a subject is broad and consists of a variety of types: Syllogistic Logic/Aristotelian Logic, Propostional Logic, Predicate Logic, Modal Logic, Informal Reasoning and Dialectic, Mathematical Logic, Philosophical Logic, Computational Logic and lastly Non-classical logics. To say that PW the-ory belongs to ‘logic’ is incorrect, since there exist so many types. The subdivision that Possible World theory falls within is Modal Logic, which category distinguishes itself from other types by being de-rived from formal logic but includes propositions that express modality. Modals are words that qualify statements, hence the addition of a modal that expresses possibility to “Rorschach is violent”, it be-comes: “Rorschach is ‘possibly’ violent”. Modalities of truth, or rather the alethic modalities, include the notions possibility, necessity and impossibility (Prior 182). Similarly, modal logic has formalized other modalities. However, I will concern myself here with the aforementioned polar opposite modali-ties of possibility and impossibility which occupy a prominent position in PW theory, as well as in Bradley and Swartz’s work.
First, in their description of what constitutes a possible world, Bradley and Swartz draw a distinc-tion between actual worlds and non-actual worlds: “When we speak of the ‘actual world’ we do not mean just the universe as it is now, in the present. When we identify it — as above — with all that re-ally exists, we are using ‘exists’ in a timeless sense, so as to encompass not only what once existed in the past and what will come to exist in the future. The actual world embraces all that was, or will be” (Bradley and Swartz 5).
Bradley and Swartz further explain that our own world is just one of many possible worlds. In our case, this is the actual world because it constitutes in our own physical space. A non-actual possible world then differentiates itself from our actual world by not being located in our physical space. This non-actual possible world is rather located in what Bradley and Swartz call conceptual space. The world of Watchmen for example, would be a non-actual possible world because in our own actual world, the alternate history of Watchmen never took place. This alternate history, as a concept, can un-deniably be imagined in our own conceptual space and, therefore, becomes a possible world.
Non-actual worlds can then be divided into another subset: namely, physically possible worlds and physically impossible worlds. A physically possible world is one that is governed by the same nat-ural laws as those of the actual world. A physically impossible world would then be the contrary: a world in which different natural laws hold to those of the actual world. Watchmen’s world would be a physically possible world in every regard, were it not for the one element that in consequence makes it physically impossible: Dr. Manhattan. Whereas the other characters all abide to laws of physics that also govern in our world, Dr. Manhattan continually breaks these laws through i.e. teleportation, fore-sight, breathing in outer space, shape-shifting. All events in Watchmen that are physically impossible, including science fiction technology, only seem to occur in Watchmen’s alternate history after Dr. Manhattan’s appearance.
Bradley and Swartz make yet another distinction between the physically possible and impossible based on whether or not the world is logically possible. Even though Watchmen’s alternate world in which a supernatural being as Dr. Manhattan exists is physically impossible; the events in which Dr. Manhattan becomes this being do not defy logic. Indeed, in the fourth chapter of Watchmen Dr. Man-hattan’s back story is explained through an internal monologue emanating from the character himself. As it turns out, he was once a human scientist named Jon Osterman. As the son of a watchmaker, Jon attended Princeton University and then joined a research facility in Gila Flats in 1959. That same year
he got into an accident where he was completely disassembled by a test machine of intrinsic fields when he went into the chamber at the wrong time. A few months later he after various attempts man-aged to completely reassemble his body. “November 14th: A partially muscled skeleton stands by the perimeter fence and screams for thirty seconds before vanishing. Really it’s just a question of reassem-bling the components in the correct sequence…” (Moore 114).
Having reassembled himself, Jon becomes a supernatural being with god-like powers. Despite this being the one event that turns the overarching physically possible world of Watchmen into a physi-cally impossible one, according to our actual natural laws, this would not be possible. The matter is logically possible in a world wherein the natural laws would behave in a fashion that would allow one to reassemble himself. Therefore, a physically impossible world is not necessarily logically impossible (Bradley and Swartz 7).
Bradley and Swartz continue their introduction of PW theory by explaining what constitutes a possible world whereby the individuals and objects that make up a possible and the actual world are given the neutral term of ‘items’. The properties and relations of the PW and actual world are conse-quently named ‘attributes’. These items and attributes play a role in the various propositions that one can make about PW’s with regard to their truth or falsehood. The notion of something being either true or false plays a pivotal role in PW theory, and seems to be a commonality shared by most PW move-ments. The account of truth and falsity that Bradley and Swartz take as their basic model is the so-called “correspondence theory” or “realist theory” or the “simple theory”. All of these different terms boil down to the same basic concept of truth that may be extrapolated from the following proposition, in which P stands for proposition, a for an arbitrarily selected item, and F for a likewise arbitrarily se-lected attribute:
“A Proposition, P, is true if and only if the (possible) state of affairs, e.g. of a’s having F, is as P asserts it to be” (Bradley and Swartz 10).
An example of this simple truth theory in action could be:
“It is true that Dr. Manhattan’s true identity is Jon Osterman if, and only if the true identity of Dr. Manhattan is Jon Osterman.”
This manner of thinking (simple truth) is so integral to our reasoning, that it might seem like com-mon sense. Nevertheless, it is upon the foundation of this simple truth that more complex propositions may be built with regard to possible worlds. An important distinction is made between a proposition that is true and a proposition that is actually true. With the addition of the word ‘actually’, the assump-tion is made that among all the possible worlds in which the proposiassump-tion is true, the actual world is present. Furthermore, truth or falsity does not come in degrees. I other words, one thing cannot be truer than another. According to Bradley and Swartz this is ‘logically untenable’. A proposition is then either “wholly true or wholly false. There is no such thing as partial truth” (Bradley and Swartz 12). One way to circumvent issues concerned with partial truth is to change the manner in which one phrases utter-ances such as “Our own universe is more true than the one depicted in Watchmen,” into for example, “Our own universe consists of more factual historical events than the one depicted in Watchmen.” As these examples of propositions make evident, PW theory and its theorists are concerned with stating matters as specifically and clearly as possible. This could be said of many disciplines connected to phi-losophy and science however, due to PW’s inherent roots in logic, there is a strong tendency to adhere to logic’s language. Early PW theory seems to be more overly an interdisciplinary subject rather than one concerned with literature and its further applications.
In concluding with Bradley and Swartz’s terminology I will discuss various properties that may be assigned to truth and falsehood with regard to possible worlds. First of all, a proposition that is true in at least one possible world is said to be ‘possibly true’. An example of this might be a proposition such as: “the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center took place on 11 September in the year 2001”. This proposition is a fact in our actual world. The actual world is then regarded as one possible world
in which the statement can be true. How many other possible worlds exist in which the proposition is true is not an issue, and does not need to be specified in this case. A possibly true proposition only needs to be true in at least one possible world. Likewise, a proposition that is false in at least one possi -ble world is said to be ‘possibly false’. A brief example of a possibly false proposition would be: “the terrorist attack on the world trade center took place in the year 2020”. This proposition is known for a fact to be false in our actual world. Hence, it is false in at least one possible world, and therefore re -ceives the property of possible falsehood (Bradley and Swartz 13).
Another important property that propositions of truth and falsity may have is that of contingency. A contingent proposition is one that is said to be true in some possible worlds but is also false in some possible worlds. The proposition then in a sense contains both the properties of possible truth and false-hood. An example of this would be the possibly true proposition made earlier of the terrorist attack that took place on the eleventh of September in the year 2001. This proposition is true in the actual world, but one could imagine other possible worlds existing where the attack had taken place on a different date, such as 12 September, 2001, or even had not taken place at all (for example worlds in which the World Trade Center would still exist). In these PWs the proposition would then be false. A possibly false proposition can likewise be contingent, such as any proposition that might make claims about the alternate history of Watchmen. In this possible world, the Vietnam War was won by the US and history had consequently taken a different route. This proposition is also contingent due to it being false in our actual world, but possibly true in other possible worlds (Bradley and Swartz, 14).
Non-contingency also exists. This is the case with propositions which are not both possibly true and possibly false, but either true or false. These non-contingent propositions would then be subdivided into ‘necessarily true’ and ‘necessarily false’. A necessarily true proposition would occur were we to introduce a pair of contradictories. If one were to assert of this pair of propositions that one of them is either true or false, then the logical conclusion must be that one of them is true in all PWs wherein the
contradictory proposition is false. Since this would then apply to all PWs, the proposition would then be necessarily true. Since necessary truth is arguably a tough concept to illustrate, I will include an ex-ample offered by Bradley and Swartz in their explanation of the concept:
Think of any proposition you like: for example, the contingent proposition that you (the reader) are now (at the moment of reading this sentence) wearing a pair of blue jeans. It doesn’t matter whether this proposition is actually true or false. Being contingent, it is true in at least some possible worlds — even if not the actual one — and false in all those in which it is not true. Now think of a contradictory of that proposition, e.g., that it is not the case that you are wearing a pair of blue jeans. Whether this latter proposition is actually true or false, it will be true in all those possible worlds in which the proposition that you are wearing blue jeans is false and false in all those possible worlds in which this proposition is true. Finally then, think of the proposi-tion that either you are wearing a pair of blue jeans or it is not the case that you are wearing a pair of blue jeans. This latter proposition… …, is true in all possible worlds, and hence… … is necessarily true (17).
A necessary false proposition on the other hand, can be illustrated using a less elaborate example. This would concern a non-contingent proposition which is obligatorily false. It would then be false in all PW’s, and therefore both possibly and actually false. An example that one could give of necessary falseness is when one would assert of pair of contradictories that both should be true. However, since they are contradictories, this cannot be the case and one of them has to be false, and would then be false in all possible worlds. Therefore, this self-contradictory proposition would then be said to have a neces-sarily false property (Bradley and Swartz 17-18).
This concludes the terminology borrowed from Bradley and Swartz as an underlying foundation towards a further analysis of Watchmen. In summary of what has been said above, I have stated that I use the distinction between actual and non-actual possible worlds. These possible worlds would in their entirety then consist of individuals and objects that are called items; and properties and relations that are called attributes. The concept that the propositions made (in regard to PW theory) adhere to is that of simple truth, or the correspondence theory. In regard to truth and falsity, propositions can either be: possibly true or possibly false, actually true or actually false, contingent or non-contingent and con-sequently necessarily true or necessarily false (Bradley and Swartz 5-18).
3.2 Marie-Laure Ryan
Whereas the terms in the above section on Bradley and Swartz serve as a foundation for attaining a ba-sic understanding of PW theory and determining truth and falsity within propositions; as an application towards a narrative analysis they may seem insufficient. For this reason I have borrowed the theories of Marie-Laure Ryan as written in her “The Modal Structure of Narrative Universes”. Here, she outlines an incredibly useful framework for determining a typology of PWs found within a narrative text. As with Bradley and Swartz’s text I will condense the explication of Ryan’s terminology.
In the first section of “The Modal Structure of Narrative Universes” Marie-Laure Ryan sets out to “develop the notion of modal system, or of system of worlds, in order to describe the components of the reader’s representation of a narrative state” (719). With narrative states Ryan means to clarify the various stages that a narrative is in. As she explains in her opening statement: “a narrative plot is a tem-poral succession of different states of affairs mediated by events” (717). Characters reside in a certain
state at some point in the narrative, e.g. Laurie is heartbroken due to a breakup with her partner Jon
Os-terman. At another moment in this narrative the same character might feel totally different, e.g.: Laurie feels joyful. A narrative event has taken place in order to transport Laurie between the two different states in the story. In this case, the event was that she started a romantic relationship with Dan. In order to explain what happened in a narrative, states and events are inseparable since it is impossible to accu-rately explain what happened with only one of the two present (Ryan 717-718).
According to Ryan, “the worlds of the modal system of narration fall into two main categories: those with an absolute or autonomous existence, and those whose existence is relative to somebody, i.e. which exists through a mental act of a character” (720). In this first category falls the aforementioned actual world. However, where the basic preliminary explication by Bradley and Swartz applied the
term actual world solely to the ‘real world’, meaning the one we as individuals currently preside in, Ryan extends this term to also comprise the world that characters in a narrative experience as their ac-tuality: “The actual world of a narrative universe is simply the sphere regarded as real by the charac-ters, who thus relate to it in the same way we do to the “reality” of which we are members” (720). In the case of Watchmen, the actual world would then be comprised of the alternate history that its narra-tive takes place in. In an analysis of possible worlds within the body of a fictional work, our own actual world can be taken out of the equation. Omitting our actual world is arguably a useful tool in analyzing any work of fiction, as it takes care of the inherent problem of truth and falsity that would arise once we would discuss the validity of various propositions within the world of e.g. Watchmen with our own actual world as a point of departure. If one would test the validity of any proposition made in the fic-tional world of Watchmen with our own actual world as the logical base, then each and every outcome would be false, because Watchmen’s alternate history simply doesn’t exist. However, if one takes his/her own actuality out of the equation, and makes propositions with the fictional world actual as point of departure, then this problem concerned with truth and falsity would cease to exist. From now on, whenever I will discuss the notion of the actual world in relation to Watchmen, I will be referring to this Ryan’s iteration, unless specified otherwise.
As readers, we are aware that the actual world is a creation from the mind of the author. However, “the reader observing the rules of the game of fiction behaves as if it were autonomous” (Ryan 720). The actual world that is perceived as autonomous by the reader can be comprised of more than one layer. A single self-governing world by one particular set of natural laws can be split into multiple un-controlled spheres. These spheres have been given names by Thomas Pavel in 1981; having called “the first possibility a ‘flat’ and the second a ‘salient’ ontology” (Ryan, 721). The salient ontology could then be visualized as the sphere that contains a particular religion or belief in the fantastical (anything that relies on belief rather than fact). The reader is then prompted to acknowledge the possibility of this
sacred reality’s existence despite having different beliefs him/herself. Actual worlds that consist of two self-controlling spheres are however not the same as worlds in which both the flat and the salient in-habit the same plane of existence; which is the case in many fairy tales, but also, interestingly, in
Watchmen.
In Watchmen’s alternate history, there exists a supernatural being with powers beyond compre-hension: Dr. Manhattan. Despite that the inhabitants of Watchmen’s actual world had initially been in shock due to the discovery of such an entity, it did not take very long before even Dr. Manhattan’s ex-istence was taken for granted and everybody went on with their lives. In short, in Watchmen the super-natural inhabits the same sphere as the super-natural. However, “[t]he distinction between a sacred and a pro-fane layer of reality may be presented as existing either absolutely (as in mystery plays) or relatively to the characters. ‘Flat’ narrative universes may thus contain individuals with a salient private ontology” (Ryan 722).
It is debatable whether a salient ontology is purely restricted to merely foreign elements that dis-obey natural laws, e.g. fantastical or religious phenomena. Could one perhaps consider a different world ideology to be salient as well? In that case the character Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) of
Watch-men could be viewed as a character with a similar private ontology. His world view is arguably so
dif-ferent to that of the main characters, or even the majority of the characters in the world; that his view does not seem to belong to that same actual world altogether, and therefore seems to be based around a set of his personal beliefs, rather than objective reality.
Despite what the true answer to this inquiry may be, as Adrian Veidt’s private ontology demon-strates it is possible for characters who inhabit a fictional narrative, to build their own modal systems “by engaging in such world-creating/ or world-representing acts as forming beliefs, wishing, dreaming, making forecasts, and inventing stories” (Ryan 722). As a result of this world-creation, there exist mul-tiple relative worlds within the absolute world of a narrative.
The first of these are dubbed Epistemic or Knowledge worlds. Whereas logicians made a tion between belief and knowledge worlds, Ryan makes explicitly clear that she disregards this distinc-tion since “telling the both apart presupposes an external point of view on an epistemic world” (722). This external viewpoint is exactly what Ryan aimed to steer clear of, since she set out to analyze the self-contained actual world of a narrative solely on its inherent properties, without any outside influ-ence from our own preconceptions or the “real” actual world. Epistemic or knowledge worlds are the various spheres created by the knowledge a particular character has about a situation in the narrative. These epistemic worlds have an important characteristic that differentiate them from all other relative worlds; they allow recursive embedding. This means that characters do not “only form beliefs about ab-solute facts, but also about private domains nested in the actual world. Epistemic worlds may thus rep-resent a whole system of worlds, some of which may be mirror-images of themselves — as in ‘Jane thinks that Peter knows that she thinks that he loves her’” (Ryan 723). Fictional characters can then possess varying fields of knowledge. Not all of the information is accessible to all the characters at all time in the narrative. This particular knowledge about a situation or person that a character does have is then said to belong to that specific character’s private domain. The information that we know to be true as readers on the other hand, is then said to belong to the factual domain. Interestingly, in Watchmen the character Dr. Manhattan has a private domain that seems to encompass both the factual and beyond. As a result this Dr. Manhattan knows all that will ensue in the story beforehand.
Marie-Laure Ryan goes one step further in her explanation of Epistemic/Knowledge worlds, which she conveniently dubs K-worlds, and adds the notion of a hypothetical extension of K-worlds. With this she means “propositions embedded under an operator of possibility or a conditional operator
if . . . then” (Ryan 724), which are made by characters in a narrative as an attempt to expand their
pri-vate spheres of knowledge. These particular conditionals can then be said to regard only the unknown, and are not concerned with debunking facts of the factual world. As Ryan clarifies, the natural laws of
the factual must be respected in these propositions linked by the if . . . then operator. Furthermore, propositions such as these can be made by the narrative’s characters in two manners: forward, as an as-sessment of the situation at hand, viewing the various options that one has in regard to action and sub-sequently starting the entire process again, but this time departing from the resultant state; or back-wards, “by choosing a target and constructing a chain of events to mediate between this target and the current situation” (Ryan 725). The forward manner is more applicable to characters that have to react fast in a given situation, while the backward manner is more applicable to characters that plan far ahead with an intention of controlling a future state of affairs (Ryan 725).
Besides K-worlds there are also Intention worlds, or I-worlds. These are created when a character commits him/her-self to a particular goal. This character will then follow a specific course of action to attain this goal. The target of the intention present in the I-world is usually a Model World. These par-ticular worlds differentiate themselves from e.g. K-worlds, by not having as its goal to represent the narrative universe as it is, but rather as it “ought to be” (Ryan 726). A model world that has this partic-ular goal is named an ideal model world (Ryan 726).
There are three types of ideal model worlds. The first is the wish-world (W-world). This sphere is defined by what the characters deem to be good or bad for themselves. W-worlds are structures with layers that contain various ranked states of affairs to “their degree of desirability” (Ryan 726). At one point in the story a character may for example strive towards one particular goal, but something unpre-dictable may ensue, for example: a higher goal may turn out to be unattainable, and the character might instead settle for a lower less desirable goal (Ryan 726-728). An example of this mechanism is more easily shown in a narrative in which the characters’ goals are more clear-cut, such as an epic fantasy such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. At one point in this story the character Aragorn’s W-world goal would be to accompany Frodo towards the end of his journey. However since their paths split around the end of the first book, this particular goal becomes unattainable, where after he decides
to rescue other comrades instead. The reverse can however also occur, as is the case in Watchmen, where the character Rorschach starts out a murder investigation to find the “mask killer”, a murderer who only targets superheroes. At one point in the story Rorschach discovers the true identity of the mask killer, but additionally finds out that this person has set another scheme in motion that has/and will murder countless of people. Rorschach’s W-world goal then shifts towards a higher goal: the expo-sure of this person’s horrendous crime to the world.
The second type of ideal model worlds is the world of moral values. This is simply put an oppo-site to the W-world in the sense that the world of moral values does not reflect what a character desires for him/herself but rather what he/she thinks is good for all the members of a group. The world of moral values is upheld by a regulative set of principles:
“X thinks that state p is good/bad/indifferent for all the members of a group w, and that any action leading deliberately to p, or intended to do so, is accordingly good/bad/indifferent” (Ryan 729).
Aside from these regulative principles there is also a variable component that lists the moral debts and credits that are earned by a character towards other participating characters during the course of an action. One character saving another puts the savior in debt towards the other and in many stories this has to be evened out in order for the narrative to have a satisfactory ending (Ryan, 729).
Watch-men, since it has a post-modern approach, does not adhere wholly to this principle, and for some
char-acters these debts and credits are left unattended at the end of the narrative.
The last type of an ideal model world that Ryan lists is the so-called Obligation world. While the M-world reflected upon a character’s moral values towards a particular group, the “O-world” switches matters around. In this case the group projects values upon the character. The character’s obligation to-wards a group is much like a binding contract. Similar to M-worlds, the O-world functions by a set of regulative principles and a variable component. However, this time the regulative principles are based
around operators of the deontic system: prohibition, accordance, obligation and reward (Ryan 729-730).
There remains but one type of relative world in Ryan’s typology, this being Alternate Universe. “AU’s” are the creations of a character’s mind and can “comprise dreams, hallucinations, fantasies, games of pretense, fictions read or composed by the characters, and worlds created through counterfac-tual statements” (Ryan 730). AU’s are of special interest to Watchmen, because as mentioned before, its narrative features a mise-en-abyme comic-book read by one of the characters that takes up a signifi-cant portion of the novel. Ryan states that AU’s such as these are not “planets revolving around the ac-tual world of the narrative system, but systems in themselves” (Ryan 730). Much like the acac-tual world that these fictions are embedded in, these AU’s have their very own actual world, which in conse-quence consists of similar relative worlds that function by the same rules as the ones listed above.
3.3 Umberto Eco
Aside from being the infamous author of the novel The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco has been highly active in possible world theory. In his book The Role of the Reader (1984) Eco deals primarily with the interaction process that takes place between the reader and a text. He had already stated the main idea of this particular process in an earlier work called A Theory of Semiotics: “A responsible col-laboration is demanded of the addressee. He must intervene to fill up semantic gaps, to reduce or fur-ther complicate the multiple readings proposed, to choose his own preferred path of interpretation, to consider several of them at once” (276). This notion can arguably be applied to any type of text; from instruction manuals to prose fiction and comic books/graphic novels. However, within the multiplicity of textual typologies, Eco presents one that makes a distinction between merely two: that of an “open text” and a “closed text”. The open kind is a text that allows for multiple interpretations by the reader. The closed text contrasts the open text by having a single predetermined interpretation to which the reader is led accordingly by the text. If one were to make an assessment on whether Watchmen belongs to the open or closed text type, then one could arguably say that the work contains elements of both. Its ending for example is open-ended and invites multiple interpretations on the part of the reader. Other instances in the novel, most notably the Under the Hood sections found at the end of each chapter, take on the guise of encyclopedic, biographical information, and are therefore of the closed type, since they mostly allow for one interpretation.
The Role of the Reader consists of a vast array of useful PW terminology. The first of useful
no-tions that Eco introduces in his explanation of PW is that of “inference”. As a dictionary entry on this term states: “Inference is something that you think is true, based on the information that you have” (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 901). In Role of the Reader Eco states two types of
in-ference. The first deals with the PW that depends on a character’s propositional attitude (whether he/she believes or feels a proposition to be true or false). The second type of inference deals with the PW of the reader’s expectations apropos of the further course of the fabula. During the course of the narrative both the characters and reader perform “inferential walks” wherein he/she presupposes or an-ticipates events that have yet to take place. Eco states that “without the notion of possible worlds, infer-ential walks could not be distinguished from semantic disclosures, that is: the procedures of actualiza-tion of discursive structures” (218).
In defense of using PW theory in regard to literature and inferential walks, Umberto Eco states three arguments. Firstly Eco finds it difficult to deal with inferential walks without referring to a notion that concerns itself with possible courses of events. Secondly, he experienced with some texts that in order to explain their workings he had to introduce the notion of a PW of one’s beliefs. Thirdly, Eco claims that since the notion of PW came from literature it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring it back there.
Even though Eco pleads for the importance of PW research in regard to a wide variety of texts, he interestingly points out that not all texts are or contain PWs. He demonstrates this fact through an ex-ample of him telling somebody how Columbus discovered the new world: “I am undoubtedly produc-ing a text which refers to what is commonly believed to be the ‘real’ world. By describproduc-ing a portion of it, I am taking for granted all the rest of its individuals along with their properties and all the rest of the propositions holding within it” (220). In certain non-fictional utterances or texts (like the above exam-ple) the entire world is taken for granted and is therefore devoid of any possibility. Eco illustrates the difference between the above example and a possible world through him telling a different story to an-other person; this time the story of Little Red Riding Hood: “Within this fictional world (a possible one constructed by the author), human individuals assume propositional attitudes; for instance, Little Red Riding Hood believes that the wolf is trustworthy. This world is a doxastic construct of the character (it is immaterial by how much it overlaps the world of the story. As a doxastic construct it is presented by
the author as one of the events of the story” (220). This idea of a doxastic construct is applicable to most of the characters of Watchmen, up until their discovery of the true nature of Ozymandias’ scheme. The final state of the narrative disapproves the doxastic worlds of the characters.
Furthermore, Eco explains that no fictional text or PW can ex nihilo invent its properties. There is always a certain amount of overlap between the reader’s preexisting knowledge of the real world.
“No fictional world could be totally autonomous, since it would be impossible for it to outline a maximal and consistent state of affairs by stipulating the whole of its individuals and their prop-erties (…) a fictional text abundantly overlaps the world of the reader’s encyclopedia. But also from a theoretical point of view, this overlapping is indispensable, and not only for fictional worlds” (Eco 221).
Even within a graphic novel, which may in terms of descriptive properties be considered superior to prose, (since it can show matter instantaneously opposed to describing it) there is always a dependence upon a reader’s preexisting comprehensive abilities. An image has to adhere to certain properties in or-der to be recognizable and not abstract.
Another term that Eco introduces is the notion of transworld identity. “The notion of transworld identity — ‘identity across possible worlds’ — is the notion that the same object exists in more than one possible world [with the actual world treated as one of the possible worlds]” (Stanford Encyclope-dia of Philosophy). Arguably, in Watchmen there are numerous examples of transworld identity; one of the more notable examples being the character Richard Nixon, who was the president of the United States from 1969 until 1974 in our “real” actual world. In the PW of Watchmen Nixon did not resign from office and got re-elected. Events such as the Watergate Scandal (which was among the key events
in our actual world that led to Nixon’s massive decline in popularity and finally his resignation) never took place.
David Lewis has a rivaling theory to transworld identity called counterpart theory which “re-places the claim that an individual exists in one world only, it has counterparts in other worlds, where the counterpart relation (based on similarity) does not have the logic of identity” (Stanford Encyclope-dia of Philosophy). Unlike Lewis, theorists that support the notion of transworld identity believe that instead of having counterparts in multiple PWs which are distinct from the one in our own real actual world, these same individuals inhabit all possible worlds at the same time while still belonging to the same identity. This is the so-called “extreme realist” view, as introduced by Yagisawa in 2010.
Many possible world theorists have their own term for what the inhabitants of a fictional universe perceive as their actual world. Eco is no exception and he calls his iteration the fabula:
“The possible world Wn imagined and asserted by the author. Wn is an abstraction: it is not the
text as a semantico-pragmatic device, since it refers only to the level of fabula; it is not a simple state of affairs, since it starts from a given state of affairs S1 and lapses through T1 (…) Tn
under-goes successive changes of state, so as to reach a final state Sn, each state shifting into the next
one through a lapse of time” (235).
Based on this definition, one could, in regard to Watchmen, question the role of the Under the
Hood excerpts present at the end of each chapter. Are these selections of prose part of the narrative’s
fabula? Since they seem to be directed towards the reader, they arguably seem like a deliberate attempt at providing background information towards the reader. On the other hand, the excerpts do belong to the fabula since they stem from publications within that same fictional world. The Under the Hood
seg-ments may be a deliberate attempt of the author towards informing the reader on background informa-tion, adding to that reader’s encyclopedia of Watchmen’s world.
4. Text Worlds in Watchmen
One of the first uses of a PW that becomes apparent in the narrative of Watchmen occurs on its second page. A duo of detectives examines the apartment of the Comedian, who has been found dead on the sidewalk below this same apartment, which is situated about ten floors high. One of the detectives is speculating how the Comedian could have died:
“Well, looks like someone broke in by bustin’ this door down. That would take either two guys or one guy on serious drugs because the door has a chain fastened on the inside. Which means that the occupant was home when it happened” (Moore 2).
The first and second lines of the detective’s dialog are written inside the second panel of the page. The third line however, is placed within a new panel where the dialog becomes a part of the narration of a flashback scene. The temporal shift is made apparent through the use of a different color scheme. Whereas the first two panels had a variety of colors, this new flashback panel consists of only shades of red and purple. One could argue that by having the dialog of the two detectives alternate between the differently colored panels, Moore and Gibbons are giving the readers a cue towards when the detectives are actually correct with their assumptions. As one reads on in Watchmen’s story, the hypotheses of the detectives turn out to be in fact correct. However, in the mind of a first time reader, the red and purple flashback panels display a PW. The fact that some of their assumptions are drawn as scenes gives them sense of precedence within the construction of the page.
Watchmen features eleven segments of prose literature. Each of these segments is placed at the end of a chapter. While these segments might seem optional for a first-time reader, they are in fact inte-gral to the book’s plot. Take as an example the very first encounter of this prose segment at the end of
the first chapter, which takes the form of an excerpt from the fictional autobiography Under the Hood by the character Hollis Mason, who was the original Niteowl (a super hero and former member of the Minutemen). Since Under the Hood is an autobiography written by one of the characters, it may be considered a PW due to the fact that an autobiography is not always factual. An autobiography is usu-ally the result of one individual’s subjectivity, in this case Hollis Mason. The events in the Under the
Hood are seen as factual to other characters in the fictional world of Watchmen. However, there is no
guarantee that Hollis Mason has observed everything he entails in his book correctly. Thus, a PW may be created through these passages from Under the Hood that functions by the following rules: The PW is true, if the events that have been perceived by the individual Hollis Mason are true. One can however not with certainty claim that Hollis Mason is a reliable narrator. Therefore the events written by Hollis Mason are a PW.
The excerpts from Under the Hood are filled with indicators of uncertainty. In the process these indicators add to the notion that this book can be considered to be a possible world. Take as an example the following lines from Mason’s writing:
“By 1939 I was twenty-three years old and had taken a job on the New York City police force. I’ve never really examined until now just why I should have chosen that particular career, but I guess it came as a result of a number of things. Foremost amongst these was probably my grandfather” (Moore 32).
In the second sentence of the above passage Hollis Mason states that he “guesses” his choice of career was based on a number of factors. The mere usage of the word guess does not provide the reader the certainty that the information that will follow this statement is the absolute truth. Similarly, the next line, where he (Mason) says that one of the factors towards his career choice was “probably” his
grand-father, arguably results in urging the the reader to construct a PW wherein Hollis Mason went on to this particular career path inspired by his grandfather. Were this passage written differently, without ad-verbs of probability in its structure; then one would arguably not be inclined to regard the matters within Under the Hood as a PW.
Based on the observations above it becomes clear that the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons do not confine themselves to merely dialog and diversity in textures, and (or) different art styles to emphasize PWs within the book’s larger framework, but also make efficient use of prose.
Hints towards a back story of characters can arguably also trigger a PW in the mind of the reader. Take as an example the proper name of the character Sally Jupiter. Her daughter Laurie, who follows in her footsteps, explains to someone when called Miss Jupiter that she dislikes this name since it was a result of her mother’s discontent with her Polish proper name Juspeczyk. This relatively small detail can be argued to open up an entire world of possibilities in regard to Sally Jupiter’s past. The reader is never (within Watchmen’s narrative at least, disregarding any sequel that has recently been released) told about the true nature of Mrs. Jupiter’s history, and the matter is left open to speculation. This al-lows the reader to fill in the gaps with his/her own PW regarding Sally Jupiter.
Arguably, any loose ends left in regard to a character’s background may instigate a PW within the reader. However, the departure towards a PW only seems to ensue once a clear hint towards a charac-ter’s untold back story is given; as was the case with Sally Jupicharac-ter’s Polish background. Whereas, when such information would be left completely blank, e.g. there would be no mention of any relation to Mrs. Jupiter’s Polish background; then the PW concerning this matter would be less likely to be created by the reader in the first place.
The Tales of the Black Freighter appears for the first time in the opening pages of Watchmen’s
third chapter “The Judge of All the Earth”. The title card and the third chapter’s first page resemble the opening page of chapter one: a page that confuses the reader at first, but eventually reveals the matters
at hand through a slow and panning cinematic outward zoom. First of all, the title page consists of a picture of an ionizing radiation hazard symbol, and an incomplete piece of text of which the reader can discern that it spells “fallout shelter”. The first frame on the next page contains the same picture as the title card, but now there are two text bubbles superimposed above it. A reader who is new to Watchmen is immediately confronted with a text bubble shaped differently from the ones that had appeared before in the two preceding chapters. This bubble, which looks like it was torn from an old tome, states the following:
“Delirious, I saw that hell-bound ships black sails against the yellow Indies sky, and knew again the stench of powder, and men’s brains, and war” (Moore, 72).
One could argue that the introduction of this new type of text bubble allows the reader to create a PW prompted by his/her initial confusion due to its unfamiliarity. This PW would then allow the reader to fill in what could possibly be the source of the prose in the tome-like text bubble. This PW would subsequently cease to exist once its source has been clarified towards the reader. One could therefore argue that uncertainty can also play a role into the creation of PW’s. Factors such as a new element (of which the unspecified text bubble with a new stylistic element would be an example) or contents that seem unrelated to the plot at hand can contribute to this uncertainty.
The final panels of Watchmen’s narrative create what I would like to call the final PW. As is com-mon with endings in books that end with uncertainty, upon finishing the book the reader will undoubt-edly start imagining what could possibly happen beyond the boundaries of the narrative. Watchmen’s ending calls for world creation of this manner. Rorschach’s notebook appears in a newspaper’s mail room, and one of the book’s many side characters (an assistant) is ordered to find filler material for his mean-spirited boss.
“Get some filler material from somewhere (…) Seymour for God’s sake! I’m asking to take re-sponsibility for once in your miserable life, while I eat lunch! Is that too much? Go on just run whichever you want… I leave it entirely in your hands” (Moore 407).
One could argue that the last sentence of dialog in the book is written and depicted in such a way that it seems directed towards the reader, and may urge this same reader to create a PW beyond the text. Interestingly, the assistant’s exterior resembles a stereotypical comic book fan. The shirt he is wearing displays a smiley with blood (which is actually ketchup from the assistant’s hamburger) smeared across its right eye, which is Watchmen’s logo. The message that this final scene could be con-veying is: this comic book is over, but how the rest of the story might go is up to the reader’s interpre-tation.
5. Possible World Analysis
For the identification of PWs I would like to borrow the same conception of PW theory as Umberto Eco, by regarding the narrative of Watchmen not as a singular PW, but rather a plurality or constella-tion/network of PWs. Within my interests are three types of possible worlds that Eco introduced:
“1- PWs imagined and asserted by the author, corresponding to all states of the fabula.
2- The possible subworlds that are imagined, believed, wished, and so on by the charac-ters of the fabula.
3-The possible worlds that, at every disjunction of probability the Model Reader imag-ines, believes, wishes, and so on, and that further states of the fabula must either approve or disapprove (Ihn.uni)”.
These three world types as described by Eco will serve as a framework in which the following analysis of Watchmen will take place.
Firstly, an identification of the first type of PW will be made. This is the world that serves as the actual world of Watchmen’s narrative. A description will be given as to where this world starts and ends. Secondly, a selection of characters through which the second type of world is channeled will be presented. The second type of world concerns itself with sub worlds that are imagined, believed or wished by characters of the world’s respective fabula. Three characters that undergo change, and are significantly represented throughout the entire narrative in regard to their thoughts, wishes and motives are Rorschach, Laurie Juspeczyk, Dan Dreiberg and Dr. Manhattan. Lastly, the third type of world
con-cerns the Model Reader. Through background sources and the manner in which Watchmen’s material is presented, the manner in which temporality occurs, its text-type, narration, a model reader can be made apparent.
A notion that will additionally be explored within the type-3 section is that of the reader’s per-spective of the narrative during subsequent readings. At the end of his/her first reading of Watchmen the reader will have become aware of its plot, and any type-3 PWs that have been created during this initial reading have by now been either approved or disapproved by events in the narrative. One could then assume that the reader, upon any subsequent reading of the book may start to imagine PWs be-yond the boundaries of the text that would arguably not arise during the initial read-through of the novel. These new type-3 PW’s would then concern matters that will never be approved or disapproved by the text itself and are left open, such as Watchmen’s ending.
Overall, through the analysis in this chapter efforts will be made to uncover to which type of Um-berto Eco’s PW typology particular PWs in Watchmen belong, and ultimately determine whether there are PWs among these that are neither approved nor disapproved.
