File

When Superhero is
Synonomous with Terrorist:
A Portfolio Analyisis of V for Vendetta
By Josh Veith
Table of Contents
Preface
2
Meet Alan Moore
3
An Analysis of Overthrowing Vengeance
4
An Overview of V for Vendetta
5
Meet the Characters
7
T-Analysis
8
The Symbolism of Clothing Throughout
10
Critical Application Questions
12
Bibliography
13
V for Vendetta
1
Preface
Dear Reader:
Generationally speaking, I am a product of 9/11. On September 11th, 2001, I was sitting in math
class when our teacher turned on the TV. I was sitting on my desk, so I could see over the kid in front of
me when the 2nd plane crashed into the second tower. When I went home my dad was standing in the
living room while he watched the TV cover the events in New York City. He wasn’t standing for any
reason other than he had just forgotten to sit down. I was in this same high school when the War in Iraq
broke out. Some students protested, while most of the student body was all for the occupation of Iraq and
the extinction of the Muslim world. Terrorism, Age of Terror, Taliban Towelhead and Al-Qaeda were (if
not are) words thrown around on the nightly news as casually as sports, weather and traffic. It was this
atmosphere of hate and fear that caused me to be intrigued by a new movie called V for Vendetta.
In 2006 I went and saw this movie under the pretense that it was a superhero movie, close to
Batman or Spiderman. Sure enough the opening scene began with a damsel in distress and a masked
vigilante coming to her rescue. The hero, V, saved Evey Hammond and whisked her back to his secret
lair. Within the first 10 minutes of the movie I could tell I was in for a good hero flick. After awhile V
started using more extreme measures to fight the evil government. He blew up state buildings and strapped
bombs to his chest, all the while I cheered for him. I shared in his hatred for the fascist government he was
fighting and hoped he would succeed. The movie did a great job of showing us the general sentiment of the
regular citizens of the city V was trying to reform. They labeled him as a terrorist and this is when it began
to dawn on me that this movie was more than just a superhero story. I realized that the man I was cheering
for was, by all definitions, a terrorist and because I supported his ideals I had no problem with the means in
which he carried them out.
In 2008 I was given a copy of Watchmen which was written by Alan Moore. I fell absolutely in
love with the novel and consider it one of my favorites. In Watchmen Alan Moore uses the superhero/
vigilante motif to ask the question: what is the greater good? I had grown up loving Batman, Spiderman
and Superman, which is why this motif spoke to me easier than other texts. It was only after discussion
with a friend that I learned V for Vendetta was based on a book written by the same author as Watchmen.
My interested had been piqued and I was determined to find an opportunity to get a hold of this book.
I’m glad I read the book as oppose to just accepting the movies interpretation and rendition. The
book is far darker and more thought provoking than the movie. Because the book came out in 1982, it is
doubtful Alan Moore had any political axe to grind about terrorism; instead the book is more of a statement
about human will. The society that Alan Moore created is oppressed and corrupt and V sets out to free
the human will. In the beginning of the story, the reader assumes that V will single-handedly destroy the
government and give the country freedom, but after his death it is apparent that he never intended to
create a new society. His antics and tactics were designed to rekindle the human spirit, the spirit that had
been lost through years of oppression and violence. Once the people had been empowered they would take
control of the government and end the tyranny they had been subject to.
V for Vendetta is meant to inspire and cause you to question the things you take for granted. We
can be mindless drones or we can choose to refuse to remain silent. If we choose to do nothing, then
bigotry, racism and all other forms of hatred will grow unabated until they fill the world.
Josh Veith
2
Meet Alan Moore
Alan Moore is considered by some a comic book genius. Born in Northampton, England on November 18, 1953, Alan Moore grew up in poverty with his brewery working father and print making mother.
Because he was kicked out of school at age 18 Moore had very little job opportunities, so with the help of
some friends he started a magazine called Embryo. This is where Moore got his start in print media.
Three years later Moore married a woman named Phyllis who eventually gave birth to Moore’s two
daughters, Amber and Leah. Whilst in the magazine scene, in England during the 70’s, Moore began doing
cartoon work for the magazine Sounds. Moore felt that his writing skills were adequate but that his artistry
was lacking, from then on Moore opted to stick with the writing side of comics.
In the early 80’s Moore began writing for The Doctor Who Weekly where he started getting national attention for his work. After The Doctor Who Weekly ended their relationship with Moore, Warrior
magazine came to Moore and asked him to do some work for them. Warrior was started by an ex-member
of Marvel Comics, Dez Skinn, who gathered up his favorite artists and writers that he had worked with
previously. One of those artists was David Lloyd who requested that Skinn bring aboard Alan Moore. Alan
Moore created a comic strip called Marvelman that was a typical comic book story. As a side project Moore
and Lloyd were asked to make a mystery themed strip for the magazine. Through hours of brainstorming
he and Lloyd created V for Vendetta, a rehashing of a previous comic book idea Moore had in the late 70’s
but was rejected by D.C.
In 1982 and ’83 Moore won the British Eagle Awards for Best Comic Writer. This national stardom landed him a role working for D.C. Comics. It was in 1986, under D.C. Comics, that Moore wrote,
and what some to believe his best work, Watchmen. Set in 1985, Watchmen chronicles the lives of retired
superheroes who come together when members of their old team start getting assassinated. Watchmen won
a Hugo award and is on Time Magazine’s “100 Best Novels” list. Watchmen was a huge success, but, Moore
felt he was not receiving adequate payment for the work and left D.C. after the completion of V for Vendetta, which would not be published in one volume until 1990.
After D.C. Moore started his own publishing firm which did not enjoy the success that he was hoping for. Unfortunately, only a handful of Moore’s work has actually reached the printing stage since his
departure from D.C. On the other hand, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta and Watchmen have been released as motion pictures.
Interestingly, Moore loathes any film adaptation to his work. In one interview he said, “The main
reason why comics can’t work as films is largely because everybody who is ultimately in control of the
film industry is an accountant. These people may be able to add up and balance the books, but in every
other area they are stupid and incompetent and don’t have any talent. And this is why a film is going to be
a work that’s done by dozens and dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of people. They’re going to show it
to the backers and then they’re going to say, we want this in it, and this in it... and where’s the monster?”
(IMDB).
Moore currently still lives in Northampton, England continuing to write comics. He eventually divorced his first wife Phyllis, but married his longtime girlfriend, Melinda Gebbie, in 2007. To put it gently,
he is eccentric. Yet, he can also be classified as a genius when it comes to creating genre defining work. No
subject is taboo for him and he has the backbone to stand behind something he believes is right. He has
shown the world that comics can have artistic and literary value. Moore will forever go down in the Comic
Book Hall of Fame.
3
An Analysis of
Overthrowing Vengeance
In Overthrowing Vengeance: The Role of Visual Elements in V for Vendetta Pedro Moreira
(University of Porto, Portugal) compares and contrasts the superficial plot with the “sub narrative” story
line that is presented through the visual accompaniment in the book. Moreira explains in his article that
certain images are symbolic of certain characteristics each character has that will allow us to gain a further
appreciation of the journey they undergo in the book. These images are what make V for Vendetta more
than just another comic book with a super hero out for revenge. As Moreira says, “Ultimately the dynamics
of this relation resolve themselves in an overthrow of the simpler motif of vendetta in favor of a more
complex narrative about society’s struggle against an oppressive regime, thus reaching a far more profound
resonance and utopian function.” (107). Moreira focuses his essay on visual characteristics that give us
insight into the minds of the two main characters, V and Evey.
The most important image to Moreira’s thesis is the imagery of the mask. He points out that in
the beginning we see both V and Evey putting on masks of sorts. V is putting on a mask that represents
“a recovery of history” (108) while Evey puts on a mask of makeup that represents the beginning of her
journey towards cultural alienation. Another image that is crucial to understanding V is the books in his
library. Books such as Mein Kampf, Ivanhoe and Don Quixote are all chosen by Alan Moore as a way of
extending the “ideological cloth out of which V is formed” (109). The last image Moreira discusses is the
underground complex V lives in. The “Shadow Gallery” is important ideologically to the reader because
it represents everything that current government is not. V does not pick and choose which cultures or
theories to save but rather embraces all ideas and beliefs through the relics he preserves in the “Shadow
Gallery”. This melting pot of beliefs represents freedom and the ability to create a new system of society.
In conclusion Modeira says,
“As readers we are constantly brought back to this ideological frame, reminded of the supreme importance of knowing the past and the need to be
historically conscious and returned to the present with a new awareness of our responsibility in shaping society. However, Moore and Lloyd are careful to
show that this recovery doesn’t lead strictly to violence. By presenting two V’s, one that in fact chooses a more violent path, and another one that, having
been brought into existence by the same ideological background, chooses to keep a positive role, one of construction and not destruction, the graphic
novel’s final emphasis is on consciousness.” (110)
I agree with this statement, that the point of the visual symbols was to hammer home the idea that any
good society is founded on principles from the past. However I disagree with Moreira when he says that the
second V is not violent. In the end Evey chooses to send the train filled with explosives down the tunnel
to the blocked intersection. She then kidnaps her future successor. I’m not saying the point Alan Moore is
trying to make is that social recovery leads to violence; rather, awareness and consciousness are powerful
emotions that will not be swept under the rug quietly.
Overall, I think Overthrowing Vengeance: The Role of Visual Elements in V for Vendetta is a great
article that could also make a strong beginning for an article based on the inter-textual relationships of
many books in regards to V for Vendetta.
4
An Overview Of V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta begins on the 5th of November, 1997. Set in a futuristic England controlled by
a fascist government that is broken up into 5 departments which are all controlled by the Head, Adam
Susan. The departments are the Nose (the police), Ears (audio surveillance), Eyes (video surveillance),
Fingers (secret police) and Mouth (department in charge of propaganda). It is through these factions that
the people are England are controlled and oppressed. Throughout the book we are only given fragments
of information concerning the rise of the political party, Norsefire, to the controlling power of the
government. What is known is that they took power after a nuclear war and arrested anyone they felt was
a radical, including blacks, homosexuals, Pakistanis and Socialists. They then sent these political heretics
to concentration camps where they were the subject of experimentation and reformation methods similar
to those found in George Orwell’s 1984. Rarely did anyone survive the camps and the book depicts images
similar to those found in Nazi concentration camps.
In the opening scene a young girl, Evey Hammond, is getting ready to go out to prostitute herself.
As she goes out past curfew she makes her first proposition to a man who reveals himself to be a member
of the secret police. From out of the shadows emerge a couple more Fingermen and they surround Evey.
Instead of arresting her they begin to rape her and promise her a quick death. Before the men are able
to follow through with their threats a masked vigilante shows up and begins quoting Macbeth. The
Fingermen tell him to go away because their conducting official business. The vigilante continues to quote
Macbeth while he proceeds to kill the policemen and whisk Evey away to a safe spot overlooking the
city. Evey asks him his name and he mysteriously answers “I’m the king of the twentieth century, I’m the
boogey man. The villain…the black sheep of the family” (13). He tells her that he was in area because he is
celebrating a very special occasion and begins to recite a poem about the old English terrorist Guy Fawkes
and his attempt at blowing up Parliament. As he finished the poem the building of Parliament explodes
sending fireworks in the night sky. “…and all over London windows are thrown open and faces lit with
awe and wonder gaze at the omen scrawled in fire on the night.” (14). This is how the book begins; it is
this act of terrorism that sends the city into an uproar. Every department in the government has their top
priority set on either finding the terrorist code-named V or to cover up his handy-work to keep up the
facade that the Head is still in control.
The main character in the book is Evey Hammond. She is a 16 year old year who lives on her own
because when Norsefire took over they arrested her father for being a socialist and her mother committed
suicide; she never saw her father again. Evey undergoes a transformation through the book where she
begins as a pretty/naïve girl to becoming a terrorist choosing to go by Eve instead of Evey. In book one she
is rescued by V, blindfolded and taken back to his lair, the Shadow Gallery. The Shadow Gallery is a large,
windowless complex filled with all sorts of rare art, books and movies. V asks for her help and she assists
him unknowingly assassinate a pedophile priest.
In the beginning of the second book, V kicks Evey out of the Shadow Gallery and leaves her in the
middle of the street alone and with nothing. She goes to stay with a friend of hers, Gordon, who is killed
by the crime boss Alistair Harper. With the death of Gordon, who eventually had become her lover, she
finds a gun and goes out to kill Alistair. Just as she is about to pull the trigger a police officer grabs her
from behind and arrests her. She is thrown into a tiny, gray cell with just a hard bench and a toilet. She is
periodically interrogated for information concerning V. Her captors shine a light in her eyes so that she
cannot see their faces. She continually tells them that she was blindfolded and does not know where he is
but they continue to torture her anyway. Eventually she finds a note, written on toilet paper, tucked away
in her cell. The note contains a history of a lesbian actress who stayed in the same cell and details her life
leading up to her death. Evey is deeply touched by the note and uses it to get her through her interrogation.
V
Eventually, her captors ask her to sign a document confessing she committed many crimes, this is similar
to the punishment found in 1984. Evey refuses and says she does not care if she lives or dies anymore. Her
captor then tells her she is free. She looks past the light and sees a mannequin and a tape recorder. She
walks around and finds she has really all along been in a wing of the Shadow Gallery. At first she is upset
with V for torturing her but he explains to her that “You’re in a prison Evey. You were born in a prison.
You’ve been in a prison so long you no longer believe there’s a world outside.” And “I didn’t put you in
prison, Evey. I just showed you the bars.” (170). V then takes Evey to the roof of the Shadow Gallery, this
time with no blindfolds, and she realizes that for the first time in her life she is free of fear.
In the third book Evey has changed. While in prison her head was shaved and now she wears it short; V
calls her Eve now. On the night of November 5th, 1999 V tells her he has to go on a date. When he returns
he is mortally wounded and yet remains calm. He tells her “First you must discover whose face lies behind
this mask, but you must never know my face.” (245), then tells her he wants a Viking funeral. Eve realizes
that she must never take off his mask, but wear his mask. Only by wearing his mask can she know who
is behind it. She loads V’s body onto a subway car loaded with explosives and sends the car downtown to
a blocked intersection underneath the city. She then dons V’s costume and makes an appearance for the
crowd that gathered to see if V would keep the promise he had made a year earlier. The crowd is excited
to see V after hearing reports of his death and they form a mob that takes back control of the city and their
lives.
The other main character in the story is V. V is an eccentric, mysterious, Shakespeare quoting
intellect that rarely says exactly what he means. Nothing is ever said of the person V was before Norsefire
took control, but we do know that for whatever reason he was thrown into a concentration camp called
Larkhill. While at Larkhill he was the subject of much experimentation and he was assigned room number
five or, as the Roman numeral on his door depicts, room V. This is what inspired V to take upon him the
name V. While in Larkhill he was the test subject of a drug referred to as “Batch 5” (80) and out of the four
dozen subjects he is the only one who survives. Eventually he is able to construct a bomb in his cell and he
destroys the entire concentration camp, escapes and lays low for the next 4 years. It is the night he rescued
Evey that he came out of hiding and blew up Parliament. After that he systematically kills the head doctor,
the head military commander of the camp and the priest from Larkhill. At each death he leaves behind a
rare rose.
After he has settled his vendetta with those who were his captors he straps a bomb to his chest and
takes over the national TV station to broadcast a message about how upset he is with how bad things are in
England and that the people of London have two years to clean up otherwise their “fired” (118). During the
next eight months V reforms Evey and prepares more explosives. On November 5th, 1998 V blows up the
building that is the center for the Eye, Mouth and Ear. This quells the Heads ability to control and monitor
the city. V promises the people they will have three days to do as they please. During those three days
complete anarchy erupts in the city and the government is too overwhelmed to handle it, they even resort
to hiring gangs to help keep the peace. It is during this three day period that the people begin to remember
what is was like before the war and they begin to want their lives back. It is also at the end of this three
day period that V allows himself to be shot by Eric Finch, a detective for the Nose. V takes on the role of
a martyr so that Detective Finch can report to his bosses that V is dead while Evey dons the costume that
very night. V’s legacy is that men can be killed, ideas cannot.
Detective Finch is a foil for showing the mentality behind V’s thinking. V rarely let the reader
know why he was doing what he was doing; it was up to Detective Finch to piece the clues together the
entire story. It is through Finch’s digging that we learn about V’s experience in Larkhill and we see the
corruption in the current government system. Finch also plays an interesting role when he travels to the
ruins of Larkhill and takes LSD to help him understand V’s thinking. It is through his hallucination that he
comes to an understanding of V sufficient enough to find him. When Finch finds him in Victoria Station,
he shoots V on site and declares him dead due to exceeding blood loss. It is also Finch’s partner, Dominic
6
that Eve captures at the end of the book, perhaps, because she will be training him the way V trained her.
Lewis Prothero, Delia Surridge and Bishop Lilliman were all characters that V killed because of
their involvement in his captivity at Larkhill. At each of their deaths V left a rose signifying that he had
been there. Another man V kills is Derek Almond. Almond is the head of the secret police and he catches
V as he was leaving the scene of Dr. Surridge’s death. When confronted V easily kills Almond leaving his
wife Rose a destitute widow. Eventually Rose becomes a showgirl as a means of making a living, but she
despises the job and funnels all her anger at Adam Susan, the Head. During the three days of black out,
Rose purchases a gun and assassinates Adam Susan.
By the end of the book only Evey Hammond and Eric Finch are the only major characters left alive
and free of gang or government violence. They are also the only two characters who recieved some sort
of tutelage from V through the book. The story was never meant to aggrandize one poltical system over
another but to show that if the human spirit is trampled on enough, the time will come when they will
dispose of their leaders.
Meet the Characters
Evey Book 1 -(26)
V - 111
7
Evey Book 2 -(154
Eric Finch - 211
Evey Book 3 -(251
V -26
T-Analysis
How does Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s contrasting use of masks and nudity
serve as a metaphor about where we place the most value in our lives?
Evey puts on makeup in the first scene before
she goes out to prostitute herself.
We do not see her face before the makeup and
all we see in her dinky apartment is a small
teddy bear on the bed. (9)
V dons his costume in the first scene before he
goes out to blow up Parliament.
We do not see his face before the costume is
put on, yet we see dozens of books and posters
adorning the walls of his lair. (9)
V uses a vaudeville costume to torment Lewis
Prothero before he destroys his dolls.
This shows that V is the only character in the
book that identifies himself through his mask,
whereas everyone else is using the mask as a
cover. (33)
We learn that V gets his name from the Roman
numeral V (5) that marked his cell door.
This teaches us that V identifies himself as the
cage which holds him. (34)
When Lewis Prothero is returned to police he
has been dressed in the makeup of a doll.
V dressed him this way to exaggerate a physical
representation of his internal cage. (36)
Throughout the book we see the foil character,
Rosemary Almond, dressed very minimally. This
represents her meekness, and perhaps her weakness. She even becomes an exotic dancer to exacerbate this representation that she is humble.
It is not until the end that she dons a large fur
coat that we see her dressed fully, and it is only
then when she kills the Head. (65) (106) (205)
When V kidnaps Evey and locks her away, he
forces her to only wear Burlap and shave her
head. (153)
When Evey finally understands that the point
of her torment was to set her free, she sheds her
burlap sack and goes naked in rain, symbolic of a
sort of baptism. (172)
8
T-Analysis Cont.
When Helen Conrad is taking a bath, she is
drawn ugly. Her skin looks worn and her hair
has a gray tint. It is while she is with her husband that we see this ugliness bared. (199)
While she is having an affair with Allistair Harper
we see that she has still not let her guard down
and that her hair is kempt and she still has makeup on. (228)
When Eric Finch leaves Larkhill, he is completely naked and he then comes to an understanding
of how V felt leaving the camp.
While touring the camp on LSD, Finch underwent a transformation that, like Evey, required
being stripped of all things. (216)
The most blatant example of how little mankind
really enjoys face-to-face interaction is displayed
by Adam Susan, the Head, when he learns that V
shut down all his viewing monitors.
We learn that Susan has fallen in love with the
monitors and mourns their silence. (229)
When V dies, Evey has a hard time deciding
whether or not to look at the body. Evey imagines all the faces it could be, but V had told her
she had to know his face without looking at it.
She finally sees the 16 year old prostitutes face behind the mask and realizes who V was. She then
wears V’s mask and incites a riot. (245-258)
Evey has totally forsaken her identity and become V. While addressing the crowd she says,
“reports of my death were exaggerated.”
This implies that she is no longer Evey, she is V.
(258)
9
The Symbolism of Clothing
Trhoughout V for Vendetta
For decades children and adults have day dreamed of wearing a spandex suit and cape at night to go
and fight the forces of evil. What is so attractive about having the opportunity to conceal our identity and
roam about as if we were free from fears and unrighteous desires? The answer to this question also answers
why the superhero motif is so appealing to such a wide audience. It’s no wonder that The Dark Knight is
the third highest grossing movie of all time or that heroes such as Superman, Spiderman and Wolverine
have had place in every entertainment medium available. This is why it is ironic that Alan Moore chose
the platform of a graphic novel to demonstrate the captivity that comes with concealing our identity. In V
for Vendetta Alan Moore and artist David Lloyd depict a masked vigilante who starts a revolution. Some of
the characters in the story undergo transformations from immature and naïve to self-aware revolutionaries,
while other characters meet violent deaths. Alan Moore’s plot and dialogue combined with David Lloyd’s
visuals teach us about personal freedom.
In the opening scenes we see two characters in two different places doing the same thing. The
first is a young girl, clumsily hiding her face behind a veil of gaudy makeup; our second character is an
expressionless silhouette putting on a cape and mask. We know nothing about these characters, save what
information we can glean from assessing their living quarters. The girl is sitting at the kitchen table of a
dingy apartment with a small teddy bear sitting on the bed. Our shadowed character is sitting before a large
vanity in a room covered with movie posters and books. It is the careful examination of these things that
teach us who this man, is. As Pedro Moreira says,
“The foreground of this scene is occupied by the objects in the room. What presents itself to be embodied behind the mask – in other words, to grant
content to the shadow’s form – are those visual elements, amongst which the bookshelf on which Mein Kampf, Capital and Uncle Tom’s Cabin are
grouped. From the moment of his introduction onwards, V transcends individuality and is a character in a stage of open resistance, to use Baccolini and
Moylan’s expression. It also becomes difficult to view V as an archetypal avenger, driven exclusively by the desire of personal revenge. His position in
relation to main and sub-narrative levels can be thought of as that of an agent on a meta-utopian level.” (108)
Only a few pages into the book, the reader can understand that the story is about a naïve teenage girl and
an intellectual ambiguity. Thus, the reader meets the two main characters of the story, Evey Hammond
and V, yet does not learn who they are, but rather what they are trying to personify, a prostitute and a
vigilante.
Shortly after rescuing Evey, V kidnaps and detains a man named Lewis Prothero, who had been
one of V’s captors whilst imprisoned in a concentration camp. V tortures
Prothero by destroying the thing that Prothero loved the most, his doll
collection. Prothero eventually comes to the realization of who V is
and after the torment of watching his dolls, his prized possessions, get
incinerated he goes insane. V then returns him to the police wearing doll
makeup to represent the mental prison Prothero is in. While the typical
person would not go crazy because someone burned their dolls, Prothero’s
addiction to them was his prison. V uses doll makeup to physically show
the mask that has been keeping Prothero captive.
Another important revelation that is revealed during Lewis
Prothero’s incarceration is that V lived in room 5 while at the
concentration camp. The cell numbers were written in Roman numerals
which put our vigilante in room V. This is important because we learn where V got his name and that
he identifies himself as his prison. Alan Moore is using V as an example of perfect self-awareness. V
10
understands himself so well that he labels himself by the prison which he was placed in for his radical
beliefs. V is not in reference to the physical cell that held him but the unswerving beliefs that led to his
detention and lack of personal prison.
At the climax of the story V captures Evey, under the pretense that he is a
police officer, and locks her away in an underground reconstruction of the
concentration camp he stayed in. He only gives Evey a burlap sack to wear and
shaves all of her long blonde hair off. He then interrogates her, pretending to be
a police officer, and she focuses all of her efforts on pleading for life. Then, one
night while Evey was in her cell, she found a letter from an incarcerated lesbian
that had lived in the cell previously. The letter details the major events in the
woman’s life, Valerie Page, that lead to her confinement. Evey begins to realize
that the real prison she had been living in was fear. Valerie was not afraid of
dying so much as she was afraid of losing that which made her who she was.
From then on Evey does not crack under interrogation and protests that she is
ready to die rather than agree to forsake her beliefs. V then sets her free and
exposes the guise in which he had been holding her. At first she is upset but
when she understands the transformation she has undergone, she strips completely naked and stands in
the rain. V has done the same thing to Evey that he did to Prothero, physically shown the mental prisons
holding each of them. In Prothero’s case his prison was his obsession with dolls; Evey has no clothes to
represent no prisons.
An interesting foil character for V is Eric Finch. Finch is a police officer hunting down V. No matter
what Finch does, V is always one step ahead of Finch. This is why Finch decides to explore the Larkhill
concentration camp, while tripping on LSD, to put himself in the same mindset as V. Once Finch is able
to attain this enlightenment he will be able to deduce exactly where V is. As the LSD begins to take hold
of his mind he sees himself dressed in prison garb being pulled into room number 5. He sits in his cell
and questions why is here, then who is keeping himself there. He deduces that the only person keeping
him there was himself. The revelation is startling to Finch and he runs out of the camp saying, “Vaulting,
veering, vomiting up the values that victimized me, feeling vast, feeling virginal…was this how he felt?
This verve, this vitality, this vision.” (216). All the while Finch is doing this he strips off all his clothes
adding to the symbolism of the process he has just undergone. Once again, Moore and Lloyd have used
clothing to symbolize the mental prisons the control us by having Finch shed the prison attire he thought
he was wearing due to the drugs in his system.
V for Vendetta is as much a fantastic novel as it is a fantastic display of art. Through the medium
of a graphic novel Alan Moore and David Lloyd were able to provide symbolic visuals to the overall
story, enhancing the message of individual freedom. Some critics might complain that graphic novels or
comics have no real literary contributions. V for Vendetta proves. this assertion is wrong. Harris Leonard
said, “Writers for this young audience use classical heroes, villains, symbols, and plots disguised in either
modern day settings or futuristic settings. In short, comic book writers consciously steal wholesale chunks
of classical antiquity and sell it to youngsters, who respond to it as freshly and warmly as for the audience
for which it was first created. In this fashion many Roman and Greek ideas have filtered into our culture.”
(405). Moore provided characters who matured and grew as the plot progress; Lloyd added some subtle
and some blatant visuals that amplify the message creating a two-fold responsibility for the reader. It is
not enough to simply skim through the book and skip the pages with no words, it is the readers burden to
carefully examine the art in order to come to a full appreciate of the work.
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Questions for Critical Application
Hisorical/Biographical
How did Allan Moore’s views on the Cold War and World War II present themselves through V for Vendetta?
Formalist
What was gained from a heavy use of alliteration over the letter v in the book?
Psychoanalytical
Was V’s extensive use of violence throughout the book a product of his Ego, Id or Superego?
Myth/Archetypal
What does the Rose symbolize throughout the work?
Feminist
How does Evey’s transformation to Eve cross gender lines as she takes over for V?
Multi-Cultural
How does V’s ascension from the concentration camp to nationally known terrorist/hero depict a sense of
cultural reclamation?
Reader Response
What inter-textual relationships are present in the work with Shakespeare’s Macbeth and George Orwell’s
1984?
New Historicism
What changes have taken place in the American mindset as far as the fear of nuclear war is concerned over
the past 25 years?
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Bibliography
Camper, Steven. “Biography”. Alan Moore Fan Site. 4/5/2010
<http://www.alanmoorefansite.com/bio.html>.
IMDB, “Biography for Alan Moore”. Amazon.com. 4/5/2010
<http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0600872/bio>.
Leonard, Harris. “The Classics-Alive and Well with Superman”.
College English 1974: 405-407.
Moriera, Pedro. “Overthrowing Vengeance: The Role of Visual Elements in V for
Vendetta “. Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal 2007: 106-112.
Moore, Alan. V for Vendetta. New York: DC Comics, 1990.
Moore, Alan. Watchmen. New York: D.C. Comics, 1986.
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