V for Vendetta- An uncomfortable Look at a Sick World

Have you ever picked up a book or watched a movie where, right from the first page or minute, you can get a good sense of the tone and atmosphere and prepare yourself accordingly? that is what happened to me when I picked up V for Vendetta, written by Alan Moore. From the first few illustrations, I knew that I was in for a dark, foreboding story that would be challenging to read yet rewarding to understand.

The novel follows Evie, a 16 year old girl who becomes involved with the mysterious V, a Guy Fawkes wearing caped crusader who sets out to overthrow the fascist dictatorship that has taken hold in the U.K. One thing that immediately struck me when I opened the novel was the art direction. Unlike the previous Moore novel that I have reviewed, Watchmen, where the illustrations were clean, concise, and detailed, V for Vendetta is, for lack of a better way to describe it, an ugly looking novel. There is a sickly feel to every illustration, often the pictures are jagged and jarring, and a general feeling of discomfort is elicited out of every page. This is not a novel where I particularly like looking at the illustrations, but I feel as if this was an intentional decision made by Moore and the artist, that this is a sick, unhealthy world being portrayed, and the illustrations should show that world as such. Thus, while I can’t say that I particularly enjoy looking at the novel and getting lost in each picture the same way I did in Watchmen, it was very effective in setting the tone and portraying the world the way that Moore intended.

What I can applaud the novel for is its depiction of both V and members of the fascist regime. It would have been so easy for Moore to portray V as a flawless and absolutely heroic freedom fighter, and to dehumanize and demonize those on the side of the fascist regime as reprehensibly evil, but instead, V is shown to be a more morally grey figure who engages in genuine acts of terrorism and psychologically torments Evie, the main character. His end goal is not to establish a democratic state, but an anarchic society, which has its own share of problems. On the other hand, the supporters of the fascist regime that the novel focuses on are not reprehensibly evil, but are three dimensional characters with virtues and flaws, believers in the system but not unthinking drones. They are, after all, just people, the same as you and I, and while their beliefs may run starkly counter to our own, it is important to remember that there is a soul in each person, no matter how wicked they may appear to us.

In that sense, the novel transcends its original boundaries of fascism vs anarchism and can easily be used as a lesson to be taught in our modern day culture of political polarization and demonization of the other. No matter how much we may think that other people are reprehensibly evil because their belief system runs counter to ours, we must remember that, were the shoe on the other foot, we would hope that we would be understood and, if not liked, at least respected, because it is precisely this extreme polarization and demonization of the other that allows for societies like the one in V for Vendetta to take hold, and we must never loose our sense of humanity for each other, lest we succumb to suffocating totalitarianism.