In part 2 of Watching The Rings (part 1 can be read here), Eric San Juan discusses how, despite their deep surface differences, Watchmen and The Lord of the Rings examine very similar moral territory, grappling with larger questions of good and evil. He also looks at the unique way each narrative meanders towards its conclusion, forgoing straight storytelling to great effect, in this second and final part of the Hot Pants feature Watching The Rings.

Staking Out Similar Moral Ground
At a glance, it appears these two stories could not be further apart – Watchmen is populated with dark and loathsome heroes willing to do wrong to achieve good, while The Lord of the Rings is peopled by noble heroes unwilling to tamper with evil even if it brings good. But that’s too simple an interpretation.

In truth, both summaries are too simplistic because the moral question posed by each tale – is the use of evil to achieve good a just act? – encourages a reexamination of our views on right and wrong. Might makes right, the ends justify the means, the use of violence to stop violence - each reader has a different perspective on these issues. Neither Tolkien nor Moore provides us with easy answers to the questions they pose. They respect the reader's intelligence enough to not spoon feed us the answer, leaving us only with the question. In Watchmen, the darkest, most vicious character (Rorschach) may also be the tale’s most well-intentioned hero, driven by a strict, if perverse, sense of justice. In The Lord of the Rings, the tale’s apparent hero (Frodo), guided by a strict sense of right, succumbs to temptation in the end. He fails. Frodo and Rorschach’s sense of justice are polar opposites – and both fail in their quests. That makes for powerful, influential storytelling.

The image most have of each story – Tolkien's known for presenting the “good” in human nature, Moore the “bad” - fails under close scrutiny, a testament to the often overlooked depth each creator injected into their respective work. Tolkien’s world is rife with horrible fathers bent on protecting their own legacy and power at all costs (Denethor), royal women so full of hopelessness they prefer to die than to see to their duties fulfilled (Eowyn), and noble leaders willing to betray the work of centuries for a taste of power(Saruman). Moore's is filled with characters who have dedicated their lives to seeing justice done (Rorschach, as misguided as he arguably is), who seek to use their great talents to better the entire world (Ozymandias, again, as misguided as he may be), and those willing to give up lives of comfort to do the right thing (Nite-Owl).

Good and evil? Neither presents as clear-cut an image of those traits as many would have you believe. In both tales, decisions made for good often lead to evil (Sam's mistrust of Gollum prevents the creature's impending redemption; Ozymandias seeks world peace and kills hundreds of thousands in the process) and thosemade in evil often lead to good (Frodo succumbing to the Ring's temptation ultimately leads to its destruction; Comedian's murder is the spark that sets Rorschach on his quest). As readers, we can question the moral wisdom of decisions throughout each work; our own sense of what is right and wrong in achieving good is the only real answer to many of the questions each tale offers.

Walking A Twisting Path
Parallels between the two works lie in their twisting narratives, too. Both stories jump forward and backward in time, relaying events out of sequence to build tension and reveal important information to the reader in a more effective fashion than a standard narrative would.

In Watchmen, for instance, we meet Dr. Manhattan midway through the first chapter. He is an aloof character, a mystery to us. Moore hides key aspects of what makes Dr. Manhattan who he is until chapter four, when his full-blown origin is told, moving from the present day to the past and back to the present day again. That information then revealed, Moore proceeds to all but hide the character away until the latter chapters of the book. When he finally returns, we have a greater understanding of who and what he is, adding further depth to his later appearances. This sequencing is important. If Moore tips his hand on Dr. Manhattan too early, the lofty potency of his early appearances, which help set the tone for the world of Watchmen, is lost. Too late and the humanity still burning beneath the surface of the character is wasted and the tension of waiting for his return spoiled. It's a delicate balance; one nudge and much of the power is sapped from the character.

Moore essentially shows us a vast power exists in the world of Watchmen, then proceeds to take that power out of play, leaving readers hanging by a thread until later in the work. Another writer may have spaced the Dr. Manhattan story evenly throughout the work, or told his tale sequentially, but not Moore. By offering us large chunks at just the right time, Moore builds a mounting sense of urgency into his narrative.

Tolkien does much the same in his legendary work. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien splits his narrative at the opening of The Two Towers, interleaving the chapters concerning Merry and Pippin, and Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and Gandalf, switching back and forth at just the right moment each time he switched viewpoint. He takes that to an even greater extreme by making Frodo, Sam and Gollum's leg of the quest a separate half of the book of its own, segregated from the adventures of the other members of the Fellowship. The Two Towers is in essence (and is in fact divided as such) two separate but related books. By doing this, Tolkien manages to create a mounting tension that lasts for hundreds of pages, showing us first how war is overtaking Middle Earth before bringing us back to the core quest of Frodo, and later abandoning that quest again to show the war in earnest in the pages of The Return of the King, leaving the reader to wonder how the quest that drives the entire narrative forward is faring until the latter portion of the epic. At the end of The Two Towers we know into what Frodo and Sam are walking, but Tolkien clips their story arc just when it seems their quest is about to fail, returning us again to the war of the Ring – a war we the readers now suspect may be in vain because of what has unfolded with Frodo and Sam. And by the end of that narrative, the readers are again left in the dark at a crucial moment, the war appearing lost.

So Tolkien holds his cards not once, but twice; once at the end of The Two Towers, then again at the end of the first half of The Return of the King. He twice shows us what is at stake, then takes a narrative out of play, leaving readers hanging by a thread until later in the work. In each instance his timing is flawless; if timed any differently the delicate tension could have been broken. Another writer may have spaced the interwoven the Fellowship and Frodo/Sam chapters evenly throughout the work, telling the tale sequentially, but not Tolkien. By offering us large chunks at just the right time, Tolkien injects a building sense of urgency into his narrative.

Conclusion
There are other parallels between these two works, links in their twisting narratives and deceptively complex storytelling techniques, in the murkiness stirring beneath the surface of seemingly black and white characters, and in the synchronicity each author built into his narrative. But that, maybe, is a discussion for another time. In the end there is only this: Alan Moore’s Watchmen and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings are landmarks in their genres, and for surprisingly similar reasons. And unlike many so-called “landmarks” that fade to obscurity with time, the depth injected into these tales and the complexity of both their telling and messages ensures each will continue to resonate for years to come.

For that, we readers are a lucky bunch.