Who is the narrator of the Black Freighter? In many ways, he is a mirror of Dreiberg and Rorschack. Like Dreiberg he is naive and harmless, except to those who would do wrong. He is cast adrift in his story as is Dreiberg in his. While both struggle and appear to make a difference, their actions are futile against a much bigger world. Neither seems to control their fate. And, like Dreiberg, he is in love, but his love drives him forward and ultimate causes him to be cast out of society. Dreiberg’s love for Laurie, on the other hand, seems to final give him a place of sorts in the world that remains.
Like Rorschach, the narrator can commit murder when it justifies what he sees as ultimately good. He disguises himself, after murdering the money lender and the “pirate’s whore”, then becomes the “implement of God’s retribution.” (Chpt. 10, page 22) He, like Rorschach, suffers for his inability to see the futility of continued struggle. Rorschach cannot let go of a wrong, even when to expose it would cause catastrophe. Both pay with their lives.
The narrator and Adrian are also alike. While the narrator built his raft on the corpses of his dead shipmates in order to warn the world of the Black Freighter, Veidt confesses that he has “struggled across the backs of innocents to save humanity.” (Chpt. 11, p. 27)
Following the emergence of the narrator as a character in Tales of the Black Freighter, Moore’s comic within a comic, is a gloomy process. A sense of despair, horror and doom dominate the tale and parallels some of the story line of Watchmen. In the end, like Dreiberg, Rorschack, and Veidt, the narrator has no choice. He is destined to ride the Black Freighter, a member of it crew we presume, forever. Their destiny, like the narrator’s, appears to be ordained by forces they cannot control.
It is interesting that Shea, the writer of the text of Tales of the Black Freighter, is also one of the creators of Adrien’s “new life form” (Chpt.11, p. 25) that brings peace to the world by threatening it with extinction. The issues of Tales that Shea writes are published two years after he disappears, with the end coming as Veidt’s plan is realized.