In Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s graphic novel, V for Vendetta, V tried to teach Evey his values of enjoyment and freedom in life. This main objective envelops so many of Evey’s different educations that the authors reinforced in the novel’s language and graphics. However, before he can teach her this, V creates a mock-jail and tortures Evey so that she would forget everything she has been already taught while growing up. Every belief Evey had about enjoying life before her run in with V is at stake.
In order to see how Evey was reeducated, we must first try to figure out what she was first educated on. On pages 26-29 of the graphic novel, Evey tells V her life story, and how she ended up living alone and working in a munitions factory. In Evey’s flashback, there is no mention of her going to school, so it cannot be known for sure whether she was academically educated or not. However, in the novel version of the story, which followed the movie closer than the graphic novel, there is mention that school was something, “Evey had never known (Wachowski 234).” In the graphic novel, V brings up the fact that there was a recession during that time period, so if she was going to school, she was probably not receiving a quality education.
When Evey’s father was taken from her, she was forced to work in a matches factory. On page 28, in the panel showing her and another girl putting matches in the box, it looks as if the authors wanted the factories to look like hell. There are other working children in the background, with a guard standing to the right. How ironic that the factory that makes products that create fire is called, “Lucifer,” which is another name for the devil. She was lonely, poor, and desperate to break out of her terrible life.
Based on this past we have of her, we can see that Evey was not educated academically, but in values, feelings, and beliefs. She learned what it meant to be lonely, poor, to work hard and never get what she wanted. It’s not that she didn’t know what she wanted, because it’s clear in the panel what she wants when she says, “I wanted my dad (28).” Unfortunately, she was powerless in trying to get what she wanted, thus the idea of helplessness was also unconsciously taught to her.
Early on in the graphic novel, V shows Evey a magic trick in the Shadow Gallery. He makes a rabbit disappear out of its cage, and then makes it reappear, though the cage is gone (94-95). This is an early attempt of V trying to show Evey that she is trapped in a prison with her beliefs encaged. What she has already been educated on is what has been keeping her from escaping the prison. The rabbit symbolizes Evey, and the cage represents the prison she was born into. One hint to V making the rabbit symbolize Evey is that he refers to the animal as, “her (95).” When V makes the rabbit disappear, it’s like Evey pretending her figurative prison doesn’t exist. She’s in a different place aside from what’s real, and she could be happier there, but it’s more important that she come back to reality to face the cage. Finally, when V brings the rabbit back, but makes the cage disappear, it’s like he’s telling Evey that she needs to break out of her jail cell, and be able to see the world beyond the bars.
The chapter of Evey’s reeducation is called Values (137). Though it’s the pinnacle of the story where the rebirth occurs, it’s not a physical rebirth. Judging from the title, this chapter is about the rebirth of Evey’s values and ideas of life and freedom. This event is Evey’s first step to growing up again, this time holding different values than the ones she was raised with before.
The first part of the torture Evey endures is getting her hair shaved off. Her head is slammed into a bowl full of water, while her captors try to get her to reveal information about V (153, 155, 157). After the combination of baldness, malnutrition, and continual physical wear and tear to her body, Evey begins to look more like an old man or woman than the young teenage girl she is. On page 160, in the middle panel at the bottom row is a perfect example of how old she looks. There are wrinkles on her forehead, her eyes are sunken, and her body is bony from malnourishment. She continues to have the same appearance when she gets out of the mock jail, and when she realizes it was V who was torturing her the whole time (167).
Page 171 starts off with Evey holding onto V as she has trouble breathing. In the top middle panel, it looks like Evey has started to revert back to infancy. V is holding her like he would a baby, and the picture is drawn so that the readers cannot see the bottom portion of Evey’s body. The entire picture looks like V carrying a baby that is wrapped in blankets with an elderly person’s face. The last panel of the top row shows the same dying face, and the last thing Evey says is, “Huhhh…” while trying to say something else. This sigh sounds as if Evey is right at death’s door.
Suddenly, in the next panel, there is a small picture of half of Evey’s face, where her eyes are big, the facial wrinkles are gone, and she is speaking in words again. As Whitbread says in his book, Design Manual:
“The sequence of panels shows the progression of time and implies change between each panel: the change of time, completion or continuation of the movement, a new location or action, or a change in point of view. In this way, comics work with the reader and expect them to fill in the gaps.” (53)
This quote means that it is our responsibility as readers to fill the gaps the panels leave us. With this in mind, somewhere in the space between the last panel of the top row and the first one of the second row is where Evey “died.” The fact that Evey says, “I…felt…like…an angel… (171)” further supports the idea that between the panels she is neither dead nor alive, but in some form of an afterlife. Also, this panel is the smallest of the page, so the length of time a reader takes to read and look at the panel is shortened. The panels that depict Evey dying and coming back to life are relatively larger in comparison, so this shows that the time where Evey initially comes back to life is very brief.
Two panels over, V is sitting on the floor with Evey, holding her. The picture has Evey sitting in the fetal position, and bundled up inside V’s frame (171). It looks like V is pregnant with Evey, as he says, “The door of the cage is open, Evey. All that you feel is the wind from outside. Don’t be afraid (171).” It’s sounds like V is encouraging her to come out and be born after dying a couple panels before. The panel after is of V standing, holding Evey’s hands and telling her to try stand. Evey’s legs seem wobbly and unadjusted, which reminds me of a newborn trying to stand and take their first steps of life (171). Finally, the last thing V does for Evey’s rebirth is take her outside to look and feel the rain. It’s interesting how Evey is suddenly naked when her and V are on the roof. This could be interpreted as her being born naked into the world just like everyone else.
The result of this controversial method of reeducating Evey’s beliefs and values is that she begins to look more like a young person. On page 174, the first we see of her after her momentous rebirth, her hair has grown out, and the wrinkles are all gone. Also, it’s important to see that it’s the first time in the story where Evey is wearing a white outfit. This is important because white is a color that is associated with cleansing and purity. For example, those in the Christian faith who practice infant baptism by water, have the babies wear white. Since the ceremony represents a person becoming reborn when they emerge from the water, the white is worn as an indication that they are purified and have a new life. Evey now has a new life to lead, and she must abandon her older one that came with the ideals and education she had before. The idea of baptism is also seen when Evey comes out to the rain on pages 171-172. Evey goes outside wearing nothing but torn and dirty rags, goes into the water naked, then reappears a couple pages later in white.
Despite the pure image Evey is seen in, what has she really learned from being deprived of food, water, and the basic freedoms and luxuries of life? V has literally forced Evey to experience what he had went through at the Larkhill Resettlement Camp. He wants Evey to take on his past as her own, so she could carry the same beliefs and ideas he fights for. Ever since Evey’s parents were taken away from her, she had lived a life of solitude and imprisonment. Like V says on page 171, “I didn’t put you in a prison, Evey. I just showed you the bars…You’re in a prison Evey. You were born in a prison. You’ve been in a prison so long, you no longer believe there’s a world outside.” Like the rabbit mentioned earlier, V has shown Evey there is a world beyond the cage that held her.
The thing about Evey’s changing values is that they can apply to us, the reader. The authors do an excellent job taking advantage of the graphics to express certain things they could not through text. On creating V for Vendetta, Alan Moore writes:
“I realized that we could bring up some quite interesting ambiguous moral issues, because, although the artwork was very black-and-white, with no shades of gray, I thought that one of the most interesting things about the strip itself was that morally there was nothing but gray. We were asking the reader to consider some interesting questions.” (Moore and Khoury 75)
The biggest value at stake here is Evey’s idea of living. V uses the mock-jail backdrop to fully expose the ideals Evey has, and all the hurt that has built up inside of her throughout the years. From her childhood, she had been swallowing her emotions, keeping them hidden and secret. V’s actions have expelled the pent up hurts and fears on which she based her education on. Evey is able to see that she is allowed to enjoy life. This means she can finally begin to grow up into an adult again, this time enjoying life and freedom, while trying to eliminate the things that suppress her new values, much like what V is doing against the government.
