The Bluest Eye vs. Watchmen

While reading The Bluest Eye I was reminded of the book Watchmen several times. For those who don't know, Watchmen is a graphic novel by Alan Moore. It's not just a comic book though, TIME Magazine called it "A work of ruthless psychological realism" and ranked it among the 100 best English-language novels since 1923. It's good stuff. I've found that Watchmen and The Bluest Eye are actually structured very similarly. Both are very powerful and moving so examining their similarities may highlight why this is. Each story is told from many perspectives, the audience is meant to sympathize with and understand many different characters. But at the same time the characters are all flawed. In the Bluest Eye, Geraldine hates Pecola, but we understand why she feels that way. We see Pecola's mother fail to nurture her kids properly but we understand why she is unable to do so. In Watchmen we understand why a Rorschach was driven to become a murderer and we sympathize with Dr. Manhattan even as he loses his humanity and ceases to care for those around him.



 Perhaps the best example of all is in the end of Watchmen, when the audience understands perfectly why a character decided to destroy New York City. Neither book has heroes or villains, just people who have been broken down by society.  One of the themes of Watchmen is "who watches the Watchmen," the idea that our heroes are just as flawed as we are, we just can't see it. The Bluest Eye explores the idea the black people and the ugly people have flawed thinking just as the pretty people and the white people do. Really neither book is about its characters. The books are about ideas, they explore human nature and society as a whole.

Other similarities are how both books use disturbing/uncomfortable scenes to move the audience and make more powerful statements, and also how both books have similar writing styles in places (but I didn't have room to expand on these.)

Allow me to play you out...

(this song was used in the Watchmen movie, also it reminds me of Bluest Eye: "Quite as its kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.")