V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta: Analysis of the Theme “We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten” (Robinson, The Idea and the Man). This terse quote was reverberated in the 2006 action thriller film V for Vendetta. A movie about rising against an oppressive government, it was directed by James McTeigue and was originally a short comic book series written by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. This quotes significance however, encapsulates the movies primary theme, that the shortcoming of mans mortality will never effect the immortality of an idea. The movie is set in the year 2020 and Great Britain has become a totalitarian government. “A virus runs wild in the world, most Americans are dead, and Britain is ruled by a fascist dictator, Chancellor Adam Sutler, who promises security but not freedom“ (Ebert, “V for Vendetta”). The movie later conveys that the virus was created in the laboratory of a prison called Larkhill. Doctors would experiment on citizens who had been arrested by the authoritarian dictator's strict oppressive laws. The prison held political activists, homosexuals, muslims, and anyone else who did not follow the government's authority. The government having created the only cure eventually uses the virus on their own people to gain control and power. Through propaganda, fear tactics, and a secret police called “Fingermen”, that frightfully mimics that of the SS, the government has subdued the masses into conscious obedience. But, as the people of Great Britain begin to seal their fate and quote the words of Dante Alighieri, “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate (All hope abandon, ye who enter in), one man rises from the fiery ashes (Webster). His character would be only known as “V”, but what he will eventually represent transcends his own flesh to emulate a symbol of hope and the beginnings of an immortalizing idea. V is the main sympathetic character in the movie, he believes he can be