Rorschach’s character is extremely complex. He’s a ruthless killer and torturer of those he deems unworthy and sees himself as lone protector of New York. To him, everyone is scum, corrupt and posing; everyone is a walking compromise and only he stands true to his convictions. Yet he isn’t a serial killer or a psychopath, he sees and recognises the pain in others but has no faith in rehabilitation for criminals, leading him to protect those he sees as more innocent by killing the guilty: "...and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout ‘save us!'...and I'll look down and whisper ‘no.'" (Chapter 1, Page 1, Panel 3). His place in the fiction is to be part of a set of characters that portray the variety of human reasoning, and I don’t think he can really be assessed separately from these others. He is diametrically opposed to Dr Manhattan, the naked blue god-man, because of his fiercely emotional viewpoint. Dr Manhattan is representative of the future, of science, of reason and most importantly of the scientists working on nuclear proliferation in the Cold War, which the text is very much about. Dr Manhattan cares for humans only as a beautiful example of complexity in the universe and to him everything is maths, each person or action is a calculation to make in order to preserve beauty in the universe. He has no need for medieval notions such as Rorschach posses of justice, loyalty, pride and nationalism. Rorschach represents us as we are and have been, not as we will be, and this is why he must ultimately die at the end of the work; he is the men who bought the nukes at the time of writing, who were so fearful of corruption and social rot that they came close to annihilating humanity. He is a damaged man that cannot let go of his horrible childhood memories because his emotions won’t let him, he will not rationalise and forgive himself for what happened to him, which would let him lead a happier life. He clings to a thing like justice despite evidence of its heavy cost on people. A third character, Dan “Nite Owl” Dreiberg, is important here. His part in the trinity is to balance between the two standpoints of vicious humanity and cold hard reason and demonstrate ‘the good life’. Dr Manhattan is alone and seemingly depressed by the end of the book, acknowledging that he cannot live with others that his wife is better off with Dan. Rorschach is crying, frustrated and again alone as he accepts death at the end, having also admitted that Dan is the better man and a good friend. By Watchmen, a balance between a human’s emotional instincts and the mind’s ability to reason is shown as being the only stable sort, as Dan, who struggles to maintain his balance between these two extremes throughout, is the only one emotionally and mentally fulfilled by the work’s end. Thus Dan is the exemplar of how we needed to act in order to survive the Cold War. Rorschach’s character is instrumental in creating this impression by juxtaposition.
On a visual note, Rorschach’s appearance was chosen specifically to suit the part in the story he plays. His smart boots, brown duster jacket and 1920s fedora hat make him seem of an older generation than the other characters, and older than he really is, enforcing the notion that he represents humanity’s past. His facial mask was a stroke of genius by artist Dave Gibbons, as the Rorschach Test is a common one administered by psychologists to test a person’s emotional responses, essentially probing their humanity. He also cleverly uses the shifting patterns to give subtle visual clues as to the emotional undertones of certain scenes, at times subtly showing butterfly-, penis- or dog-like shapes for insight.
