"V for Vendetta" Reading Response

                V for Vendetta,  written by Alan Moore and drawn by David Lloyd, is a graphic novel which takes place in England about a dystopian future in which people are watched constantly and everything is filtered.  One person wants to change this totalitarian government.  His name is V and the government calls him a terrorist.  The book centers on V and Evey Hammond, a would-be prostitute whom V rescues.  In V for Vendetta, the book revolves around two main concepts, justice and anarchy, both of which are very instrumental in shaping the plot. 

            In V for Vendetta, justice is a major theme.  The book debates on what justice means and what its limits are.  For example, in the beginning of the book, the police, or Fingermen as they are called, have found out that Evey is trying to prostitute herself.  One of the Fingermen says, “You know the laws on prostitution, that’s a class-H offence.  That means we get to decide what happens to you…. You’ll do anything we want and then we’ll kill you.”  The bringers of justice in this society get to decide your fate.  In this case, they want to rape and kill her.  That would be allowed in that society because that’s their justice.  The price of prostituting yourself should not be getting killed, but it is.  Is this justice?  Does prostitution equal rape and death in the eyes of the law, and moreover, in the eyes of justice?  It shouldn't, but it does here.  This shows how justice can be taken to the extreme and can be mistaken for allowing law keepers to do whatever they want.  At another point in the book, V talks about how the justice of this world has been transformed.  V says, “The justice that I loved was gone; who had such kindly eyes; who took such small and careful steps…Transformed, she glared through narrow slits and ground good men beneath her vicious heel.”  This shows readers how, in this society, justice has morphed into something that is more like injustice in disguise.  Justice in our world is supposed to help find the truth and give people the treatment that they deserve.  Justice in this world however, oppresses citizens and rises up those who shouldn't be put upon a pedestal.  Is it justice to rape and kill someone who’s only guilty of prostitution?  Is it justice to oppress innocent and good people? No!  It’s not!  This book tells us how justice is easily abused and misused.

            In V for Vendetta another major theme that the book revolves around is anarchy.  The book focuses on what anarchy really is and how it connects to the other theme of justice.  Most people think of anarchy as something with no laws or order to keep people in check.  But, as V says, “Anarchy means ‘without leaders’; not ‘without order.’ With anarchy comes an age of… true order, which is to say voluntary order.  This age…will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle… has run its course.”  This anarchy that V wants is not chaos, but uncontrolled order.  This type of anarchy is meant to balance out the chaos that the government’s justice has brought about, and to bring about a true kind of justice.  This justice from anarchy would be the people’s self-appointed justice, not their totalitarian government’s justice.  V also talks about the different versions of anarchy: chaos and order.  As V describes anarchy he explains, “Anarchy wears two faces: both creator and destroyer.  Thus, destroyers topple empires; made a canvas of clean rubble where creators can then build a better world.”  In this way, this shows how V believes that in order to make this society better, he must first destroy it.  This is also V’s way of saying that in order to get justice, there must be anarchy.  All of this shows that the book is trying to say that anarchy is not always a bad thing.

            As you can see, the two major themes of this book are justice and anarchy.  The book’s focus is on how these two themes interact, and subliminally, how we can incorporate them into our lives.  Anarchy isn't chaos, but un-ruled order, and justice should be finding the truth dealing out punishments fairly.  As V says, “justice is meaningless without freedom.”  This freedom can be our own type of anarchy, our own liberating order.  What this book is really trying to teach us is that justice and anarchy can coexist.