Responsibility, Fate and Anarchy

So, this novel was pretty freaking awesome, just putting that out there. Also, please try to avoid too many movie spoilers. I don’t know about anyone else, but I haven’t seen the film version yet, and since it apparently doesn’t follow the book, please don’t ruin it. Thanks.

Anyway, I went into this book not really knowing what the story was about. It wasn’t my first graphic novel, so I wasn’t in that boat with some of you, but all I knew was that someone was on a vendetta (got that from the title, don’tcha know). Needless to say, I wasn’t really expecting it to be quite that much of a political piece. Still, I really liked it. The mystery, psychology and political commentary were well paced and spaced, and I quite enjoyed the way that characters didn’t just disappear, but we continued to follow up on them throughout the entire novel. For example, I was a little confused as to why we kept following the plight of Rosemary until we discover that she is the one who is going to kill the leader, but at the same time, even when I didn’t know where her story was going, it was interesting to see the long term consequences of her husband’s treatment of her, V’s actions, and her own choices that ultimately led her to stand next to that car with a gun.

V talks about wanting everyone to take responsibility for their actions, and that is a major part of what this book is about. He forces that responsibility on the people who ran Larkhill by killing them or driving them insane (why is Prothero the only person from Larkhill he didn’t kill, by the way?). He never shirks his own responsibility for the things he does. Even when we don’t see characters taking responsibility for their actions, we see the results of those actions, and we know who is to blame for them.

One thing I wish we’d seen more of was Fate. While the whole Susan/Fate relationship was interesting to observe, I wondered what exactly Fate did. They talked about “consulting Fate,” but from what I read, I never really quite grasped what it is that fate does for them, aside from calculating the exact minute when the rain will start. Anyone have a more clear idea than it just being a supercomputer and supercomputing for the government?

One of the most interesting things to me in the novel was V’s distinction between Anarchy and Chaos when Eve asks him, “All this riot and uproar, V…is this anarchy? Is this the land of do-as-you-please?” He replies, “No. This is only the land of take-what-you-want. Anarchy means “without leaders” not “without order.” With anarchy comes an age of ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order. This age of ordung [sic] will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course. This is not Anarchy, Eve. This is Chaos.” I think it’s quite a fine distinction, and is well explained, but most of all, it’s something I had not thought about before, so I found the concept intriguing.