V for Vendetta is a movie about a London dystopia set in the near future where London has been turned into a totalitarian state as voted in by the people. There are night curfews and ‘undesirable’ people disappear into non existence. It follows the story of Evey, an orphaned young woman who accidently finds herself caught up in the ploys of the terrorist V. V has no specific identity and hides himself behind a Guy Fawkes mask as he tries to do what Guy Fawkes failed to do.I won’t keep going on about the plot because if you haven’t seen it then you ought to and if you have seen it, you know what I’m talking about anyway.
The moral of this story is a tad more complex than most. There are plenty of themes about how the government should be afraid of its people, not the other way round. And there are a few profound moments of “artists use lies to tell people the truth while politicians use lies to cover the truth up” and the like. The horrible society that we find them in was created through fear. Their fear led them to elect a government that promised to make them safe and it led to their horrible circumstances. It would seem that the moral of the story would be to not live in fear (a life lived in fear is a life half lived etc) but I don’t think that’s the key point.
When Evey was held prisoner she came to the revelation that when she was stripped down mentally and physically and the only thing she had left was her life, she still found herself not giving in to torture because she still had her integrity and the choice to not give her captors information. The experience of torture and accepting she’d rather die than give in freed her from her fear.
Therefore, the moral of the story is: Value your integrity and do not live a life in fear.
