V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

Remember, remember the fifth of November,

Gunpowder treason and plot.

We see no reason

Why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot!

Having already seen the wonderful movie made of this graphic novel, I was eager to read the original work. As others have reported earlier in this class, this book is set in England’s near future, when a totalitarian government watches over the entire population and controls everything that is communicated to them. The leaders have code names for each other and the business they carry out; free speech and any other kind of resistance is quickly crushed by some of the “fingermen” who look and sound as sinister as the Gestapo. Out of this world of terror emerges (what else?) a terrorist – at least, that is what the leaders call him. In truth, he is both a victim and a villain, vowing to vanquish the vermin that he sees as the current decision-makers; he is a superhuman vigilante who has a vendetta and is out for vengeance. Throughout the novel, he is only called ‘V.’ He dresses himself in a caricature of Guy Fawkes, the 17th English terrorist who almost succeeded in blowing up the House of Lords. This wonderfully complex character spouts Shakespeare as he enacts his vengeance, while saving the life of the young Evey Hammond along the way. As a kind of protégé, Evey assists V with some of his plots, although she eventually balks at the extent of his murders, and runs away from him. I thought this story could only be told in a graphic novel, since the colouring and shading of the panels greatly contributed to the understanding of the moods and setting. The wordplay is witty and lively, even if the dialogue is stilted at times. This novel began as a series of comic book first published in the mid-1980s, as a reaction to the British government at that time under the rule of Margaret Thatcher, and therefore I cannot catch some of the historical references. According to his preface to the paperback edition, Alan Moore hated that time in English history – a time when, among other things, England was considering passing laws making homosexuality illegal. “I’m thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple years. It’s cold and it’s mean spirited and I don’t like it here anymore,” he wrote in 1988. He and Lloyd, along with other talented artists, created a wonderful piece of 20th century literature. This novel at the same time questions, breaks down, and strengthens the reader’s beliefs. And at the end of the book, when Evey also dons the cape and mask of Guy Fawkes, they prove that even such a tyrannical government as the one depicted here cannot kill the idea of freedom.
Although this graphic novel does have frank depictions of violence, sexuality, vulgarity, and nudity, it should be appropriate for mature teens.

If you enjoyed this book, please consider reading the following :
Fiction Recommendation #1 : 1984 by George Orwell. Another novel set in a futuristic England, dealing with technology and human defiance. The two main characters, Smith and Julia, fight Big Brother. This groundbreaking novel influenced many works of the later 20th century, including V for Vendetta, as well as introduced a number of words into our vocabulary : Thought Police, Big Brother, Sex Crimes, Orwellian.
Fiction Recommendation #2 : The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. This wonderfully gothic novel deals with another masked, hidden, and misunderstood character that is often taken for a villain.

Fiction Recommendation #3 : Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert. Another graphic novel, this time taking the well-known Marvel comic book heroes and transporting them to Elizabethan England.
Nonfiction Recommendation #1 : The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld. What if the Nazis had triumphed in the Second World War? What if Adolf Hitler had escaped Berlin for the jungles of Latin America in 1945? Rosenfeld’s pioneering study explores why such counterfactual questions on the subject of Nazism have proliferated in recent years within Western popular culture.