The book has taken a turn for the more abstract. After the interlude (in which V plays a piece on the piano, and sings about how the masses are wearing figurative masks), the story becomes one more centered around Evey. She questions V about his reasoning for not showing any desire for her since they had met. This interagation ends in Evey suggesting that V is her father, who she hasn’t seen for years. V is silent, but takes her outside…then disappears. His body turns into a manquin, and Evey is left out in the cold. At this point I was thinking that V maybe wasn’t as paternal as he seemed, that he was a crazy phychopath…
After this little ( and seemingly insignifigant) hiatus from the story, V is again doing what he does best: blowing stuff up. Well, this time he’s using it as threat to broadcast his meaage to England using a very powerful TV station. During the entire break in of the station, the only words are coming from two Tv programs. One speaks of how horrible war has gotten across the world, while another is about the comedic domestic life of an unlikely British couple. The british couple atory, I notice, always comes after something is said about the war. Maybe this is a metaphor for the way that the media is trying to cover up the problems in the society? I’ve no idea. When the massage is donw broadcasting…well, I won’t spoil what happens, but there’s some pretty dramatic stuff going on.
After that part of the story concludes, we go back to Evey. She’s staying at the house of a friend, visiting nightclubs, ect. Normal stuff. Until that is, she buys a gun for “protection”. The plot at this point is fairly convoluted(there’s a lot of singing for some reason), so I can’t give you a clear reason why she gets the gun. Regardless, she’s arrested for being in collusion with V, and when the authorities find the gun, she’s carted off to prison.
Overall, I think the story has really started to slip. It was going so strongly too…And now there’s dancing, and little to no clear explanation of the characters motives. To me it looks the the author tried too hard to include lots of similies and metaphors, and as such the plot is left at the wayside. Ah well, I expect that everything will be explained in a puff of logic, and all the plot holes will be cleared up in a great culmination of art and writing ability.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Norma // Nov 1, 2006 at 12:09 pm
I completely agree with your opinion on the book slipping after the prelude. The first part of the book was quite good, filled with action, and other interesting events. I especially enjoyed the reading of Delia’s diary, and discovering parts of V’s somewhat horrific past.
Also, it was a little bizarre that Evey felt like she was somewhat smitten by V, and then all of a sudden, she sees him as a paternal figure. A little creepy, but then again, so is V.
I hate to refer to the movie, but I noticed that both are quite pretentious. Both do try rather hard to seem symbolic, it’s rather evident when at one point, everything in V’s world is connected, (i.e. V and eVey, room 5 and the Roman numeral V), but I still throughly enjoyed the book.
2 tonyitaliano // Nov 1, 2006 at 12:09 pm
David, I definitely should have read V for Vendetta. I just did not know that it was a cartoon. I remember someone telling me that it was a cartoon when the movie came out, but I forgot. “Very NICE!” (J. Wasserman)