In Watchmen by Alan Moore the ending is quite surprising. They reveal that the mask killer is actually Ozymandias, the smartest man in the world and he plans to kill half of New York City with an explosion caused by the dying of an alien. Dan (Nite Owl) and Rorschach find this out a bit to late because when they arrive he had already caused the explosion. Dr Manhattan shows up and doesn't kill Ozymandias because what he did was actually perfectly logical and was a way to stop the nuclear threat by diverting everybody's attention to this massive catastrophe. The others try, and fail, to kill Ozymandias. One by one they all agree not to tell anybody that it was him, everybody except for Rorschach who s vaporized by Doctor Manhattan before he is able to leave. Dr Manhattan then proceeds to leave the Galaxy with a better understanding of humankind.
I think that ultimately this is a statement about how some people must be sacrificed for the greater good of Humanity and sometimes, that's a hard pill to swallow. If you think about it in a perfectly logical sense, what Ozy did was right. He prevented a nuclear threat and while he killed/injured approximately 3.5 million people in the process but I'm sure that many more deaths would've occurred if nuclear war between the U.S and Russia broke out. So it's really not to clear if what Adrian (Ozy) did was wrong or right. It shows just how crazy things can be perfectly logical sometimes and if you are thinking in a strictly logical sense, then you may do crazy things.
Another example of this line of thinking is when Dr Manhattan vaporizes Rorschach. Now, Dr Manhattan is DEFINATLY the most strictly logical thinking character out of all the watchmen. He says thing like: "A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?". He didn't even flinch when he kills Rorschach. A man who he had known for a very long time and had worked with. Overall he is fine with murder and can do it without really caring about the person who he is killing. He is thinking logically again besides, Rorschach's death is for the greater good so whats wrong with cold blooded murder?
Overall, I really liked the ending, it was cleverly written and had a very deep statement about the human mind. The rest of the book is also amazing bit this part stuck out to me because of it's gritty realness. I could actually see such logical people losing their ethics and morals for the greater good. People having this kind of thinking scares me and makes me think that being llogical is not allways the solution
What do you think about the things that Ozy and Dr Manhatten did? Do you think that they were moral and why?
I think that all of them are flawed, but without flaws there can't be a difference in people. Dr. Manhattan can't find the difference between life and death which is normally caused by too much power. ( another character w/ the same problem http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Renard) Ozy can't control himself and starts to kill people and can't stop.
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