As someone who has only seen
the movie version of V for Vendetta once
many years ago and have never read the graphic novel, I wasn’t exactly sure how
similar or different the movie version would be to the graphic novel. I was in
for a surprise when I discovered just how vastly different, they are from each
other. With that being said, they do have some similarities when strictly looking
at the motives of the characters. Let’s dive into those motives and how the
author and illustrator of V for Vendetta
achieved getting these motives across to their readers.
In Scott McCloud’s chapter of Understanding Comics “Blood in the Gutter” we are presented with different panel –
to – panel transitions, and an introduction to the term “gutter” as being the
white space between the panels which is where the audience of reader “takes two
separate images and transforms them into a single idea” (McCloud, 66). After
finishing reading V for Vendetta,
several themes or ideas that were most prevalent is that of justice, freedom, one’s
integrity, and how identity ties into these ideas overall. The novel conveys
these themes to us by the acts of anarchy against the fascist government that
has taken over England. The whole reason behind V’s acts is because he was once
a prisoner in a resettlement camp and was tortured for years. Once V obtained
his freedom, he set about obtaining it for the rest of the country and serving
justice to those that had oppressed him and England for so long.
The question that is asked throughout
the novel is “Who is behind the mask?” But
what we as readers learn throughout the novel however is that it doesn’t really
matter who is behind the mask, and we also learn that (spoiler alert) it changes, and in
hindsight we should have seen it coming. The opening panels of the novel
foreshadow the events to come in the novel by doing just what McCloud talks
about, by using scene – to – scene transitions and juxtaposing Evey and V in
almost identical scenarios, both are getting ready for something, in front of a
mirror, and both of them wearing a type of mask. In the end, it ends up being
Evey behind the Guy Fawkes mask, because it doesn’t matter who is behind the
mask, because the mask is a symbol for the acts that are being done. Something
that V says sticks out to me in this instance, which is in Book 3 when he says “Anarchy
wears two faces, both creator and destroyer. Thus destroyers topple empires,
make a canvas of clean rubble where creators then can build a better world”
(Moore, 248) This also ties in with the closure aspect the McCloud mentions in
Chapter 3 of Understanding Comics, as
readers we are, in that moment, meant to draw our own conclusion that V was the
destroyer, and Evey is the creator who comes in to help create a better world
to live in.
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| https://archive.org/details/VForVendettaComics/page/n3 |
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