Quinceañeras: Bildungsroman In Under The Hood

Quinceañeras are well-known celebrations of a girl transitioning from childhood into adulthood. During this celebration, the girl is thought to be “coming of age”. Coming of age stories, or bildungsromans can be present in many instances. Just like real or fictional people, a city like the one in Watchmen can have its own coming of age story. These types of stories are an important part of the literature community, as they help to show how characters can grow from their experiences. However, not just people can have a bildungsroman, but cities can have their own story as well. One such example would be the history of Las Vegas and its dealing with difficulties. Difficulties are present in anyone’s life. Whether it’s minor inconveniences

The first search for meaning is when superheros and supervillains started emerging after comic books had made their debut. It was suddenly popular to fight crime as a vigilante. In Under the Hood, the reader can understand why a certain masked hero, Nite Owl, came to exist. Simply put, it was because it was “trendy” at the time and fighting crime in outfits while being a hero seemed very appealing to him. The inciting incident that pushes the community to start searching for this meaning was when the Comedian was murdered. Old masked heros came out of hiding to find out why and the readers get a feel for what it’s like for the current masked heros throughout the book. Some difficulties faced are Jon leaving for Mars, heros getting attacked, Rorschach being arrested, the citizens rebelling against the masked heros, and Laurie Jupiter having her own identity crisis. Since Jon is essentially the city’s and country’s “parent” and takes care of it by protecting it against oncoming attacks, when he leaves it leaves the country as well as the city vulnerable and it has to learn how to operate like that of a baby bird leaving the nest for the first time. Rorschach and the other masked heros do help keep the crime rate down, even if it’s contrary to what the citizens think: that the Watcheen are not helping the problem but are instead the problem. This mentality causes the “who watches the Watchmen” (Moore, 60). Laurie’s identity crisis over who her father is causes her to spiral into a panic. Jon must help her out of this panic which leads him to realize that Earth may be worth saving after all, so he goes back to Earth with Laurie. Meanwhile, all these difficulties that the city is going through, there are still some masked heros (mainly Nite Owl and Rorschach) trying to figure out what is going on. When Rorschach and Nite Owl have their