‘History may at best be a critical teacher who tells us how we ought not to do

things. Of course, it can advise us in this way only if we admit to ourselves

that we have failed’ (Habermas). Discuss with reference to literature’s
contribution to our sense of historical awareness.

Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s comic book, V for Vendetta, follows the
anarchist hero, V, as he pursues a campaign to annihilate not just the ruling
fascist government, but also the seeds of fascism that lie within the human
condition. The ruling party, known as Norsefire, has taken over Britain
following a nuclear war that destroyed the rest of the world ten years earlier.
Throughout the comic, we find ourselves questioning whether the methods V
uses to attain his goals are morally justified. He uses violence against a
totalitarian order, aiming to destroy them for their use of violence against
others. In V for Vendetta, the belief that violence is justified stems from the
idea that one has the right to use others as a means to their own ends. Both V
and Norsefire express this philosophy through their violent acts. Such use of
force demonstrates their view that their particular ideology is a universal truth
that must be imposed. In other words, both the anarchist V and the fascist
Norsefire believe their authority is the natural state of things. Yet despite V’s
tyrannical behaviour, we find ourselves identifying with him, deriving pleasure
from his torture and murder of fascists. Its parallels to historical reality are
clear and we revel in V fulfilling our own desires to punish Nazis for their
inhuman acts. If we choose to condemn V for his acts of cruelty, we are
confronted with our own hypocrisy in enjoying his acts of vengeance. The
pleasure we derive from the pain of others, even if only imagined, is an
indulgence in the same motivations that produce Norsefire’s ideology.
Consequently, we understand that our wish to harm those we consider to be
wrong is a result of our own obedience to our particular cultural norms.
The Holocaust illustrated that the elements of Western modernity that
were previously considered progress: modern science, industrial production
and the dialectic of Enlightenment, were used to produce once unimaginable
cruelty. Consequently, philosophers such as Jean-François Lyotard assert that
our framework of understanding has been constructed on grand narratives. 1
These are the historical narratives produced by the ideology of one’s society:
the ‘Idea of Progress in Western civilization’ for example. 2 John Stephens and
Robyn McCallum define a grand narrative as a ‘global or totalizing cultural
narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience.’3 As
hierarchical social structures are the foundation of ideology, it is those in
authority positions that create and reinforce such narrative structures. When a
culture views their representation of the past as the ‘single unitary truth,’ they
neglect the reality that these are not fixed truths at all, but narratives
composed by those who ‘ha[ve] or had the power’ to do so. 4

1
Jean-François Lyotard, La Condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir [The Postmodern
Condition] transl. by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester University Press,
1984), p. xxiii.
2
Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 4.
3
Robyn McCallum and John Stephens, Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story
and Metanarratives in Children's Literature (New York: Routledge, 2013), p.6.
4
Peter Middleton and Tim Woods, Literatures of Memory: History, time and space in postwar
writing (Manchester University Press: 2000), p. 21.

Page 1
 In V for Vendetta, V’s preternatural strength and ability to control
events marks him as a superhero. His ‘different, higher ontological status’
seduces us into seeing his acts as moral even if we sense they are not. 5 This
is due to our expectations of superhero fiction where the moral authority of the
hero is never called into question. Similarly, we expect V’s authority to be
unquestionable. Yet we are left to decide for ourselves how far we approve of
his actions. Alan Moore comments, ‘The central question is, is this guy right?
Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this?’ 6 Moore and Lloyd
force us to ask what the foundations are, if any, to his authority. Our
ambivalence towards V culminates in the reveal that it was he, not Norsefire,
who imprisoned Evey, starving her and shaving her head. 7 Yet, this
‘systematic desexualiz[ation] and devastat[ion] of [her] body’ forces her to
confront her essential self.8 She is purged of the ‘misogynistic norms’ that
allowed her to depend on her beauty for survival, such as when she attempts
to prostitute herself.9 Though his brutal act directly mimics those of Norsefire,
(it is even implied Evey is in a reopened Larkhill) V desires the opposite result.
Rather than forcing Evey into an oppressive ideology, V frees her from her
psychological constraints. Peter Y. Paik articulates the audience’s ethical
dilemma by asking:

So if V’s act of deceiving and torturing Evey is wholly immoral and

altogether indefensible, what are we then to make of its outcome,
whereby Evey emerges from her ordeal determined to take on the
arduous task of rebuilding a more human society? 10

It is tempting to believe that, in this case, the ends justify the means. It is even
more persuasive because of V’s foreknowledge that Evey would gain a
newfound strength after subjecting her to such an ordeal. However, Moore
and Lloyd suggest V’s behaviour is wrong regardless of this. This is not
communicated to us by any particular example. Rather, we are led to deplore
him by recognising the key theme of the comic: that the only way to blunt
one’s desire to control others is by recognising that those we disagree with
are also human. In doing so, we overcome our own indignation with both V
and Norsefire.
Throughout the comic, V perceives the future before it occurs.
Moreover, we sense that he manipulates not only Evey’s final decision to
become the new V, but the whole narrative. In the chapter ‘Various
Valentines’, V topples the dominoes he has been lining up on the frontispiece
of each book, while Dominic Stone, Detective Finch’s partner, finally discovers
V has access to Fate: the Leader’s computer system. Paralleling Prospero in
5
Peter Y. Paik, From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe
(University of Minnesota Press: 2010), p. 172.
6
Heidi MacDonald, ‘A for Alan, Pt. 1: The Alan Moore interview,’ The Beat [online]. 2006 [cited
27 October 2014]. Available from:
<http://web.archive.org/web/20060404210249/http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/2006/03/a_for
_alan_pt_1_the_alan_moore.html>.
7
Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta (London: Titan Books, 2005), p.166.
8
Tracy Bealer, Showing Evey the Bars: Radicalizing the Female Body in Moore’s V for
Vendetta [online]. [cited 30 September 2014]. Available from: <https://bmcc-
cuny.academia.edu/TracyBealer>, p. 7.
9
Ibid.
10
Paik, pp. 172-173.

Page 2
The Tempest, the events are merely part of V’s scheme to collapse Norsefire
and allow a society organised by ‘true order, which is to say, voluntary order’,
to take its place.11 His knowledge of things before they occur, of fate, is
reinforced by his access to the computer, Fate. Though one could argue it is
simply a coincidence things emerge in V’s favour, he reminds us this is not so
when he tells Dr. Surridge, ‘There is no coincidence Delia, only the illusion of
it.’12 The panels of V arranging the dominoes into his ‘V’ symbol alternate with
panels depicting Stone (whose name associates him with the domino stones).
V speaks within his own panels with speech bubbles, denoting him as a
character inside the narrative. Yet his speech is also in Stone’s panels,
captioned, suggesting he is outside the narrative, an omniscient narrator.
Thus, V is both the author of the narrative and a character within it, controlling
the plot from within. While Stone unravels his scheme, V announces:

The pieces are set out before me, perfectly aligned. Complete, one
may at last grasp their design; their grand significance. … Poor
dominoes. Your pretty empire took so long to build. Now, with a snap of
history’s fingers… Down it goes.13

Having set up the events like the dominoes, V flicks a single stone, knocking
down the rest, as the Leader sees the ‘V’ symbol on Fate’s screen. Revealing
to the Leader he has access to Fate is the final part of his plan. Like the
domino, unveiling this news is the single act that causes the rest of the
establishment to fall in a chain reaction.
Thus, in V for Vendetta, events are predetermined and the characters
merely play a part. Though V shapes the future to his own ends, he still
remains merely part of a larger design. Moore revisits this idea in Watchmen
when Dr. Manhattan says, ‘Things have their shape in time, not space alone.
Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future.’ 14
Yet, unlike any other character, he is able to see into the future. It is no
coincidence he is also the only surviving victim of Larkhill concentration camp:
a place where Norsefire executed, according to Lewis Prothero, ‘All the
darkies, the nancy boys and the beatniks’.15 If Auschwitz is the major example
for why we must remember history, then Larkhill serves an identical purpose
in V for Vendetta. In The Twilight Zone episode ‘Deaths-Head Revisited,’ Rod
Serling explains, ‘The … Auschwitzes … must remain standing because they
are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the
Earth into a graveyard. And the moment we forget this … we become the
gravediggers.’16 Thus, V’s past as a victim of such a major atrocity grants him
a profound level of historical awareness. His clairvoyance is merely a fantastic
representation of the human ability to positively influence the future by
maintaining a connection ‘to traditions’ and ‘earlier ideas’.17 Furthermore,
11
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, p. 195.
12
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, p. 74.
13
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, pp. 207-208.
14
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen (London: Titan Books, 2007), p. 24.
15
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, pp. 29–31.
16
‘Deaths-Head Revisited.’ The Twilight Zone. Fremantle Home Entertainment. 1961. DVD.
17
Roel Kuiper, Uitzien Naar de Zin [The Anticipation of Meaning] (Leiden: Groen en Zoon,
1996) [online]. Available from: <http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/179/editorial-historical-
awareness>.

Page 3
anarchism is portrayed as the ideology of the historically aware. Fascism is
represented as the ideology of those who see history as destined towards a
single end.
We are only given vague accounts of what happened at Larkhill
through the memories of various characters. Rosie remembers when ‘they
dragged [Mrs. Rana] and her children off in separate vans’; Evey recalls the
arrest of her father, who had been in a socialist group. 18 Dr. Surridge has a
flashback to a silhouetted V in front of flames and she, Prothero, and Bishop
Lilliman, all recall encountering him there. We are denied any definitive
answer as to what happened: we are only given perspectives. The lack of a
single conclusive narrative of Larkhill parallels the futility to historicise the
events of the Final Solution. For Lyotard, Auschwitz stands as the supreme
reminder for why such teleological narratives should be rejected. It represents
‘the most powerful example to date which testifies to the singularity of all
events and our inability to represent them conclusively and adequately in
language.’19 The slaughter of millions ushered in an unparalleled level of
scepticism toward grand narratives and to ‘the possibility of knowledge and
representation in principle.’20
The Holocaust disrupted the traditional view that there is a single
narrative of the past ‘waiting to be recovered.’ 21 A society’s interpretation of
historical events is the key contributor to a society’s belief that their values are
objective and true. The concept of ‘history’ itself, one ‘bound up with notions of
“objectivity,” “reality,” and “truth”,’ cannot be used to represent the Holocaust
as it was itself caused by a society’s belief in the ‘objectivity’ of their
ideology.22 The impossibility of representing a ‘past reality’ of Auschwitz is
analogous to Detective Finch’s inability to reproduce an accurate narrative for
what transpired at Larkhill.23 With no way to represent a definitive narrative, he
must instead imagine what happened. Though he uses Surridge’s diary to
draw inferences from, it is ultimately his ‘web of imaginative construction [that]
serves as the touchstone by which [he] decides whether alleged facts are
genuine.’24 When Finch does weave a narrative, it is clearly an interpretation
of the past, not a reflection of it. He says, ‘I’ve taken key excerpts from the
diary, balanced them against my own findings and placed them in order.’ 25 In a
pastiche of detective fiction, Moore and Lloyd highlight the connection
between the job of the detective and that of the postmodern historian. Finch,
as the historian, suggests that neither Surridge’s diary, nor any of his other
findings, purely reflect a single historical reality. He tells the Leader, ‘The next
entry I want to read … refers to the events of the previous day. It starts with
the words “he looked at.” Which are crossed out. Then it says “No. Can’t write
about it yet. Can’t hold…’ And then another gap.’ 26 Our expectations for
18
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, p. 205.
19
Wulf Kansteiner, ‘From exception to exemplum: the new approaches to Nazism and the
“Final Solution”, in The Postmodern History Reader, ed. by Keith Jenkins (New York:
Routledge, 1997), p. 414.
20
Kansteiner, p. 416.
21
Middleton and Woods, p. 21.
22
Robert Braun, ‘The Holocaust and problems of representation’, in The Postmodern History
Reader, ed. by Keith Jenkins (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 418.
23
Kansteiner, p. 415.
24
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 244.
25
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, p. 80.
26
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, p. 82.

Page 4
events to be ‘properly represented’ by ‘the formal coherency of a story’ are
dashed.27
Surridge’s incoherent diary entry exposes the flaws inherent to all
testimony. Her omissions reflect how it is merely a ‘fantasy’ that real events
inherently contain ‘an aspect of narrativity.’ 28 Rather, we impose narratives on
reality to give it meaning. This meaning however, is inevitably influenced by
the power structures of ones milieu. Though it seems that Surridge narrates
the flashback of Larkhill, it is of course Finch who reads her entries. This
ambiguity makes us uncertain of whom is narrating and consequently, whose
story we are being told. As we cannot hear the voice of the narrator, the
narrator is both Surridge, who had written the diary entries, and Finch, who is
reading the story in the present. Consequently, we are also uncertain whether
to interpret the images as Surridge’s flashback or as coming from Finch’s
imagination. This fragmented interaction between text and image makes us
sceptical about Finch’s conclusions. This scepticism evokes the
acknowledgement that after Auschwitz, we can no longer assume the
narratives we produce reflect a true reality. We must acknowledge that our
social-ideological environment influences the narratives we construct. By
extension, we are forced to question if the imagination is even capable of
representing reality. If one believed they could depend on their repertoire of
signs for comprehending reality, then Auschwitz confirmed how limited signs
are. The horrors of Auschwitz in reality, and of Larkhill in fiction, exceeds the
capacity of human understanding and so we are left with incredulity where
understanding once was. According to postmodern discourse, this uncertainty
now haunts all signs and, by extension, our faith in our conception of reality. 29
As Elie Wiesel states, ‘The progression into the inhuman transcends the
exploration of the human.’30 This is not to suggest Finch cannot derive
meaning and understanding through the signs at his disposal, such as
language. On the contrary, it is only through Finch’s inventing that he is able
to find truth. However, it is a personal truth rather than a universal one. Thus,
personal narratives do not obscure truth, but rather, are a solution to the
grand narratives that do obscure it. Moore and Lloyd encourage us to
recognise that narratives are always produced by the imagination and thus
the individual can only find meaning through using their own. Narrative and
meaning are inseparable. As White says, ‘the absence of narrative capacity or
a refusal of narrative indicates an absence or refusal of meaning itself.’ 31
Generating truth through the imagination is evident throughout V for
Vendetta. When Finch visits the now defunct Larkhill, he takes LSD and
hallucinates being a prisoner there. In confronting his self-narrative as a
prisoner to life, he, like Evey, finally sees ‘the bars’ of the ‘penitentiary that we
are all born into.’32 Thus, it is not through the imagination alone that characters
are able to shed their fears – they are only able to do so when they personally
experience the horrors of Larkhill, real or imagined. When Evey is imprisoned
27
Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore & London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 4.
28
Ibid.
29
Rosenfeld, p. 24.
30
Elie Wiesel, ‘Snapshots,’ in One Generation After (New York: Random House, 1970), pp.
46-47.
31
White, p. 2.
32
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, pp. 169-170.

Page 5
by what seems like Norsefire, she reads a letter from a woman named
Valerie, whom she believes is in the cell next to hers. Valerie recounts coming
out as gay to her parents, writing, it ‘broke [my] [mother’s] heart… but it was
my integrity that was important. … It sells for so little, but it’s all we have left in
this place. It is the very last inch of us… but within that inch we are free.’ 33 It is
this ‘last inch’ of integrity that Finch and Evey also find within themselves after
their ‘experience’ as prisoners at Larkhill. Through immersion in a place that
goes beyond what their imagination can represent, they are able to gain
critical distance from what they have imagined as true. They recognise that
they are responsible for what they consider ‘true’ and they have the power to
‘rewrite’ these self-narratives. They finally understand that their memories are
merely stories - ones that are not true, but are as imagined as the historical
narrative of Larkhill. They can slough off their past identity as a victim, one
they have let the ideological framework determine for them. In confronting the
power of their imagination, they realise their capacity for constant renewal.
When Finch hallucinates being imprisoned in ‘Room Five’ he says, ‘How did I
get here, to this stinking place: my job, my life: my conscience: my prison…
Who imprisoned me here? … Who can release me? Who’s controlling and
constraining my life, except… Me?’34
Ultimately, V, Finch, Evey and Valerie find their ‘last inch’ of integrity
through sloughing off the particular grand narratives they had identified with.
V’s imprisonment of Evey serves to demonstrate that regardless of how much
we reject grand narratives through historical awareness, we always participate
in traditional power structures to some degree. It is simply unavoidable as our
consciousness is constructed, and limited by, our social conditions. V can only
hope to rid the world of coercion and violence by using it himself. Any other
solution is simply beyond his comprehension. What is clear by the end of the
comic is that V uses violence in the hope that it will end violence for future
generations. He says, ‘Anarchy wears two faces, both creator and
destroyer.’35 V understands that to realise anarchy, he must be the ‘destroyer
[who] topples empires,’ to let ‘creators’ such as Evey ‘build a better world’ from
the ‘canvas of clean rubble.’36 He recognises that his acts of violence, though
necessary, ‘have no place’ in his ‘better world.’ 37 And so with ‘no hope for
jettisoning his own complicity in the torturer/tortured dyad completely,’ he
commits suicide.38 V himself is the last part of Norsefire’s world that must be
destroyed. V for Vendetta teaches us that our imagination is always limited by
our enmeshment in our historical and social moment and yet, we are able to
attain self-knowledge when recognising this. We combat grand narratives
simply by noticing their influence on us. In doing this, we see that past events,
historical and personal, should not be viewed as a past reality waiting to be
revealed, but as ‘an imaginary picture’ that can provide perspective on the
present.39 In this way, history serves a similar function to literature. Literature,
unlike history, never claims to be fact: it is explicitly imagined. What we learn
from Lyotard, Hayden White, and R. G. Collingwood is that for history to be
33
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, p. 156.
34
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, p. 215.
35
Moore and Lloyd, V for Vendetta, p. 222.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Bealer, p. 9.
39
Collingwood, p. 243.

Page 6
useful, it must be viewed similarly to literature: a narrative constructed by an
individual’s interpretation of data. In V for Vendetta, the fictiveness of history is
literalised in the form of Larkhill, which, like Auschwitz is a site of past
inhumanity and thus a site for personal transformation in the present. This can
only be achieved by using our creativity to overcome the grand narratives we
have internalised. In doing so, we contribute to the possibility that such
inhumanity will never happen again.

Word count: 3472

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