V' is an
interesting and intriguing character. We know that V finds inspiration in Guy
Fawkes, from whom he adopts his face with a mask and that is precisely what
caught my attention, the fact that we are not able to see V's face. As it is said in this image
portraying a an Oscar Wilde's quote, human beings tend to be more themselves
when they don't have to be themselves, or at least when nobody can recognize or
judge you. V, besides covering his face maybe due to the scars that he has, he
adopts the face of an ideal. He forgets about his name. He becomes an idea that
near the end Evey understand and after imagining the face behind the mask, she
realizes that knowing the face makes the idea human, and humans are fragile,
are mortal. It would give it a gender, a personality; it would make we fit that person into the concept of his humanity.
"Did
you think to kill me? There’s no flesh or blood within this cloak
to kill. There’s only an idea. Ideas are bullet-proof".
(Moore 236)
"If I take off that mask, something
will go away forever, be diminished because whoever you are isn’t as big as the
idea of
you" (Moore 250)
The mask wearer is closely related to the escense of the mask and it also protects him from everyone else. We don't know who V is but due to his actions and his mask we relate him to an idea: revolution.
Although it
kind of puzzled me the fact that Evey followed the steps of V - because she is
a woman...voices are extremely different, so everybody would be able to realize that the original V was not this one - it makes sense when you think of V
as an idea instead of a person. Maybe that's why Moore gave us this story with
a female follower of V, to give power to the idea of recreating/representing an idea more than becoming someone. Highlighting the fact that anybody can be V if they have already free their minds towards revolution.
Another depiction, besides the mask of Guy Fawkes, that we can see in the novel is Larkhill. This is the place where the man in room number five (5=V) becomes V. In the Shadow Gallery, V recreates Larkhill. He does it to revenge Prothero, but curiously since it is a representation of his past and experience, V uses his own Larkhill to free Evey from her fears and past, to show her the world through his eyes, to free her mind so that she could see what is really right and not what she has been told by an oppressive governement.
And if we think about it, in literature, everything is a representation of something else. So in V for Vendetta, we can find depictions within other representations so as to confront the audience to their surroundings and be critical about it. Make us wonder how much of these elements have been present in our history or how many of those may someday be. It was necessary to make a terrorist the protagonist of the story because they are usually the "bad guys", but whether we agree or not with the means, the fact is that the goal is "benign" in Evey's words. The goal of open people's eyes by showing them what they were following at. Make people aware they are the responsible for whatever might be happening. The mask is not hiding the wearer, the mask is intended to perform an idea, to represent that we all can be part of that idea. 
Did all this mask symbolism at the end work? Well, suffice to say that "the Guy Fawkes mask symbolizes, as it were, the unity of protest and thus makes the protest recognizable as such" (Kohns 5).
Can you think of other situations, books, movies, etc., where masks play an important role? What do you think about V?
References
Kohns, Oliver. Guy Fawkes in the 21st Century. A Contribution to the Political Iconography of Revolt. Image [&] Narrative. 2013. PDF
<http://ojs.arts.kuleuven.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/300/251>
Moore, Alan. V for Vendetta. DC Comics. 1988. PDF
Within pop culture, every superhero story has adopted the concept of the mask both to protect the identity and to create an incorruptible character as an immortal idea.
ResponderEliminarThe character of Bruce Wayne once said: "As a man, I'm flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed; but as a symbol... as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person." is a fascinating thought as we are not only conditioned to behave in a certain way due to constraints placed by the society, but also by the idea that we have of ourselves.
It always catches my attention people who are prone to criticize and say "I would never do something like that.", and I think to myself: "How can you know, man? How can you know for sure?" You can't never know how you would deal with a certain problem until you have to face it on your own.
In the first season of The Legend of Korra, the antognist, named Amon, is similar in some ways to V. Besides using a mask of his own, Amon is also the leader or symbol of a revolution. He is an anarchist and vigilante. He wants to overthrow the current system and make everyone equal, hence the name of his group, the equalizers. He has even stated that he is the solution. Solution to what? To the injustice that he seems to perceive.
ResponderEliminarThe difference between both characters is the view in which they are seen. Both can come off as either a hero or a tyrant depending on a persons viewpoint. Amon has his followers who view him a hero while the rest of society think of him as a villain. V is viewed as a "hero" by his followers as well and viewed as the enemy or villain from the governments point of view. All in all, both Amon and V could be considered morally ambiguous. Going back to Amon's mask, it is used both to remove the importance of himself as a person and place this importance instead on his movement. In addition, as we can evidence from the protagonists reaction towards Amon, the mask instills fear in his adversaries.
Masks, in most literary works, have been use as a way to conceal a characters identity in order to empower the characters’ ideas and/or actions and it helps the reader/viewer to not relate the idea to a person or a face but internalized it as a concept.
ResponderEliminarMoreover, a mask leaves out the facials expressions which are essential to understand a person’s true message, although, in this case what we are trying to understands are V’s the ideas and thoughts and a works perfectly as it gives a more transcendental power as it makes them be analyzed and evaluated without taking into consideration the human factor.
What is curious about masks is that as they hide people’s identity they also useful to represent other things, in this case, V hides his true self and as you mention in your post, is through the mask that he acquires a new identity that goes beyond the historical character of Guy Fawlkes, that is first the idea that his mask represents. For me it is really interesting the fact that the mask makes V be nobody but everybody at the same time: anybody can be V, as it is shown in the last scene of the movie when the crowd is wearing masks; in that exact moment all of them are V or even in a more deeper way, they all are the idea that V wanted to transmit and that transcends humanity.
ResponderEliminarThe same happens in Watchmen with a character named Rorschach: he is constantly wearing a mask and in some point in the story, police men take his mask and get rid of it, which makes him beg for his mask screaming “give me back my face!!” After that scene I understood that his mask became a vital part in his life and that he no longer recognized himself as a normal person but the guy who uses a very peculiar mask. Also, he is telling us that his mask became his identity and that without the mask he is nobody, he is incomplete.
As an interesting fact, the word “persona” comes from the word “phersona” that means “the mask of the character/character”. That word proceeds from Greeks and is expressed as πρóσωπον [prósôpon], so, we can say that we are nothing without our masks or identities.