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Freedom Through Anarchy in V for Vendetta

By ShockeronShockSt

I’m going to start out by saying that I have never seen the movie V for Vendetta, so please don’t hate me. I’ve only just recently read the graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore, the one the movie is based on. This graphic novel presents a theme of freedom through anarchy that is illustrated with dark images that left me thinking about government and the control it has over the people. The world portrayed in this story is one akin to what I assume may have happened had Hitler's regime reigned. There are concentration camps and a government that monitors and controls its people's every move.

To portray this image, Moore uses iconography like that explained in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Moore uses the symbol of the V in the circle to mark the locations that the protagonist, V, takes a life or makes a statement. After V calls for the people of this country to be free in Book 3 of the story, there is a scene of a girl with pigtails spray painting the word “bollocks” on the ground and saying it over and over and damning everything that she feels has controlled her. At the end of this, she spray paints V’s symbol, the V in the circle. This calls the readers of the graphic novel to see how V’s agenda, his desire for freedom through anarchy is spreading like wildfire throughout the country. V’s work is being seen even though the government is trying to keep his movement quiet and keep their control.

I think the most amazing thing that Moore does in this graphic novel is to use the dominoes as a symbol throughout the books of the graphic novel. There are pictures of dominoes in each of the three books and in the third book everything comes full circle, the reader has to use their own sense of “closure” as McCloud mentions in Understanding Comics to recognize that each of the events that are mentioned in the entire graphic novel all connects and each add up and run into one another like a domino effect. The scene where V finally completes his domino set up a version of his symbol it all clicks. Each backstory about a character and each story told by V all links together and all of them are affected by each other.

The use of dark images and iconography really emphasized the main theme of freedom through anarchy in V for Vendetta by Alan Moore. Moore used many of the facets discussed by McCloud in Understanding Comics. If you haven’t read the graphic novel and you’ve only watched the movie, or if you’re like me and hadn’t done either, go get the book! It’s really amazing and it really opens a lot of interesting viewpoints.

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