Meta Manhattan

Throughout the Watchmen Dr. Manhattan appears as a source of absolute power. His journey in exploring his power begins with an act of self definition. With his previous body destroyed, Manhattan reconstructs his basic systems in a process involving screaming and scares. He acts as if he were a normal human being for the early part of his life, but comes to recognize the implications of his power. Manhattan continues to question human practices, culture and interactions throughout the novel before deciding in the final pages to try his hand at creating life.

I posit that Alan Moore wants to set Manhattan up as an allegory for "the writer". Were I to infer Moore's journey to respect as a writer, I would guess that he views it as a great, trans-formative experience. He must have shed what he was before and reconstructed his ideas from some sort of independent learning.  Having seen his antics on film, I guess that Moore believes his status to be greater than that of a normal person and thus, can act in an abnormal way. Like Doctor Manhattan, he doesn't feel constrained by human society as a result of his unique perspective. Like a God, the two create life and have absolute power in their realms, one in the "actual" universe, the other in the literary universe. In summation, I see Doctor Manhattan as Alan Moore's guilty pleasure. He sees a flatter representation of himself in the character and keeps him around the entire story out of a vanity.