In
Chapter 9 a stunning truth is revealed at long last: Laurie is the daughter of
the infamous Comedian. To help drive this point with a little more emotion, 
The bottle as
well as the snow globe represent Laurie's subconscious ignorance of the fact
that she has always truly known she was Edward Blake's daughter. Laurie remarks
about the snow globe, “I lifted it, starting a blizzard. I knew it wasn't real
snow, but I couldn't understand how it fell so slowly… I figured inside the
ball was some different sort of time… Slow time.” This is similar in imagery to
the bottle of Nostalgia slowly falling throughout the issue. We can take this
to mean several things:one being that Laurie's acceptance of the bottle's snow not being real as her acceptance of her ow repressed truth. Another being that both the globe and the bottle have an
aspect of slow time occurring, which implicates a long amount of time until
they break. Whenever she was a child and unwittingly glossed over the truth,
the snow globe breaks; just as with the bottle when she finally fully
understands the truth of her parentage in the present day. Their shattering
represents the shattering of innocence, albeit innocence based on a lie. This
draws a similarity in meaning to the Comedian’s Smiley button. Instead of blood
representing a harsh truth come to light on the button, the bottles are
shattered to represent this truth. 
This whole exchange sparks another
reaction within Dr. Manhattan. His revelation is inspired by Laurie’s and is
similar I that it is a truth that was simply innocently ignored: Humanity is a
miracle. Dr. Manhattan is reminded that anyone in the world is as special and
miraculous as say a thermodynamic miracle, everyone in fact, and that’s why he
forgot this truth. Dr Manhattan says profoundly about human life, “…the world
is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become
commonplace and we forget… I forget.”
Through Laurie’s dark revelation,
Dr. Manhattan realized the true potential for good in each human being despite
impossible odds, inspiring to come back home and save the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment