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i wonder how anybody can be mystified by rorschach/walter owning plates.
he is, and has always been (since he left the charlton home - at sixteen), a single man living on his own. his lifestyle has always been modest, and his descent into the near-vagrant state at the start of the GN has been gradual. i can perfectly see plates and maybe a simple stove as the usual outfit for a room that´s meant to be let to a worker who has to care for himself. there´s definitely nothing fancy going on in the cooking department (the empty can is testimony for that), and plates are used as long as there are clean ones left. i imagine during the years the cooking and cleaning has became less and less regular (hence the complaints of the landlady re hygiene), accompanied by walter picking up more and more irregular eating habits.
i think it is likely that he has occupied the same room for a long time, and has taken care of it less and less, leading to the run-down state of things (broken crookery etc) of the GN present.

There are no signs of a stove in Rorschach's apartment (and we already know that he does not require his beans to be heated), nor of a cupboard, just the plates, and a fairly large number of them. The ensemble of these facts is the intriguing thing. The plates are, literally and metaphorically, out of place. There is even no sink to pile them in.

So far, I'm quite sure that RR used to make a living in the garment industry, then became a masked hero, getting some significant support from Dan Dreiberg. After the Roche case and the Keene Act, Rorschach acts on his own and makes his living basically from dumpster-diving. There seems to be absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any other means of income.

What I am wondering is whether the out-of-place plates could be a clue for some other, supplementary, means of income.

i wonder how anybody can be mystified by rorschach/walter owning plates.
he is, and has always been (since he left the charlton home - at sixteen), a single man living on his own. his lifestyle has always been modest, and his descent into the near-vagrant state at the start of the GN has been gradual. i can perfectly see plates and maybe a simple stove as the usual outfit for a room that´s meant to be let to a worker who has to care for himself. there´s definitely nothing fancy going on in the cooking department (the empty can is testimony for that), and plates are used as long as there are clean ones left. i imagine during the years the cooking and cleaning has became less and less regular (hence the complaints of the landlady re hygiene), accompanied by walter picking up more and more irregular eating habits.
i think it is likely that he has occupied the same room for a long time, and has taken care of it less and less, leading to the run-down state of things (broken crookery etc) of the GN present.

With a regular income and a domestic situation that had not yet descended into the abject squalor of living like an animal, is it not the case that Kovacs would simply have had both the need and money for cutlery to eat with and plates to eat off over the course of eleven working years, scant possessions he would hold on to over time to become cracked and filth encrusted with age and neglect?

Maybe he does love his mother after all...

If he does it's in an abstract kind of way. He certainly has no love of her as a person but as mother, yeah. It's hard to shake off that one no matter how heinous your mother (or other horrendous family member).
He loves her but he also wants to drive over her with a steamroller for hurting and betraying him.

Maybe he realises that most women turn to prostitution out of desperation. His mum wasn't quiet about the fact.
Maybe he figures many of them have kids at home. (Though part of me wonders why he doesn't feel the need to free those kids from a mother like he had.)

He is able to discern motivation and doesn't see all crimes as requiring the same punishment. He's not 100% absolute in his attitude to criminals. He shown discernment.

Odd the amnesty on pimps, though, seeing as a pimp killed his mum. Strange the absence of pimp-shaped retribution.

Maybe he just finds that life so distasteful he doesn't want to go anywhere near it even to stamp it out. He'd rather pretend it wasn't happening than to face up to those memories again.

Minutemarch, I have been finding your posts very insightful and I've been pretty much agreeing with you, to include what I quoted here.

Gleaned from the New York State Psychiatric Hospital West Branch report, Chap. VI:

Having left the Charlton home aged sixteen, Kovacs took up '...residence in the first of a series of small apartments'.

It's entirely conceivable that his former carers provided the young Walter with a leaving gift of his crockery and cutlery, a welfare package of a few of the basic essentials to set him up in his new home out in the big wide world. Alternatively, he acquired these possessions along the way from the various different dwellings he occupied over the years before finding himself living under Mrs Shairp's delapidated roof.

The report also goes on to inform us that Kovacs took up '...full employment... within the garment industry, an occupation he apparently remained in up until the mid-seventies, maintaining a dual life between his daytime employment and his nocturnal activities in the guise of 'Rorschach'.'

He was therefore holding down a regular paying job for a full eleven years whilst carving out his extracurricular crimefighting career and must surely have managed to put away something in the way of savings during that time; he certainly wouldn't have frittered away his money on trivial personal extravagances or a social life.

One can summise that Rorschach simply abandoned his job mid-seventies after the Roche incident and walked away from his regular life as Walter Kovacs for good. With Walter being dead and gone to all intents and purposes after that point, he then entered his truly vagrant unemployed doomsayer phase which, whilst providing him with the perfect cover to gather information in support of his now obsessive nocturnal quest for justice as Rorschach, dropped his living arrangements in the toilet as a consequence. Prior to this, Walter had not been living such a meagre transient existence incorporating the same appalling personal hygiene and low domestic standards that he would later adopt (his colleagues and boss at the garment factory would surely have said something if that had been the case beforehand, putting his job at risk).

With a regular income and a domestic situation that had not yet descended into the abject squalor of living like an animal, is it not the case that Kovacs would simply have had both the need and money for cutlery to eat with and plates to eat off over the course of eleven working years, scant possessions he would hold on to over time to become cracked and filth encrusted with age and neglect?

This just strikes me as being an altogether more plausible, far simpler explanation as opposed to some contrived hidden meaning or clue hinting at a mysterious supplementary means of income for the character. Hell, he's complicated enough as it is!

We can all of us postulate all we want, but when it really comes down to it:
Wanna quickly and easily show the reader that Rorschach lives like crap? Draw a stack o' shitty old dirty cups 'n' plates piled up in his apartment - done!

Rorschach is really facinating. He shuns comfort and luxury, but like eating sugar cubes and gets nostalgic for soft drinks. I guess they may have been at the root of his very few happy childhood memories...

Maybe they bring back those feelings of comfort and warm memories for a few moments. It'd also explain why he scoffs a sugar cube on the hover bike ride to karnak. He must have been really on edge there....

Maybe he figures many of them have kids at home. (Though part of me wonders why he doesn't feel the need to free those kids from a mother like he had.)

The one thing that changes Rorschach's tune is the fact that Mrs. Shairp actually cares about her children. She if hadn't she wouldn't have held them so protectively like she had when Rorschach went back to the apartment to get his replacement mask, she would have thrown them at him. She also protects them by never telling them she was a "Whore" ("Please..they don't...they don't know...") while Mrs. Kovacs flaunted her occupation for everyone to see, not caring if even her only child knew about it.

By realizing that Mrs. Shairp was both a whore and a loving mother, Rorschach didn't hurt her.

By realizing that Mrs. Shairp was both a whore and a loving mother, Rorschach didn't hurt her.

excellent point. highlighting yet another moment when rorschach´s black and white world takes a hit.

There was another comment, upthread, about he likes his beans cold, to paraphrase, where do we get this assertion? I know that Dan comes in on him finishing a can and offers to warm them up, however, he's almost done with them. Kind of too late. I'd have turned down a warming at that point too. Yes, I know there's a plentitude of snarfing. Sitting in the fridge devouring. Starving man, no point in warming, get food in as quickly as possible. That's how I see it.

We can all of us postulate all we want, but when it really comes down to it: Wanna quickly and easily show the reader that Rorschach lives like crap? Draw a stack o' shitty old dirty cups 'n' plates piled up in his apartment - done!

We know that he doesn't usually heat his beans not only from the first dialogue with Dan but also from the fact that, along with the yet very mysterious dirty dishes, we can clearly see opened bean cans, one of them with a spoon sticking out of it. I'm not speculating that he has a preference for cold beans or that it reflects an sort of ethical code, but simply pointing out that it is the way RR usually eats beans. This makes perfect sense in light of the fact that he clearly has no stove to heat food with anyhow.

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