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Book 2, Chapter 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in V for Vendetta, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom and Anarchy
Bigotry
The Power of Symbols
Vendettas, Revenge, and the Personal
Fatherhood, Mentorship, and the State
Summary
Analysis
On March 8, 1998, a lounge singer sings about her fetish for men with “armbands” and “the triumphant will.” Evey is sitting with Gordon in the club, and she notes that she’s “a bit too drunk.” Evey likes Gordon, she thinks to herself. He’s an aging gangster who can protect her. Evey notices Rosemary Almond, whom Gordon knows through some of his underworld connections, sitting at a table by herself. No one will befriend her, because the last two men she’s been with have died.
The art in Norsefire is, without exception, crude, propagandistic, and childish. Here, the lounge singer’s act is purely sexual and nationalistic (using language associated with Nazis)—it has no redeeming artistic value. Evey’s relationship with Gordon is remarkably similar to that between Evey and V—she turns to men for protection. She still craves a father-figure, and finds one in Gordon.
Themes
As Evey sits in the club, she notices a gangster Gordon knows, named Robert, talking with another man. Robert begs the man—who we recognize as Peter Creedy—to help him save his mother. While Derek Almond was alive, Robert explains, there was “an understanding” that kept his mother from being sent to “a home.” Creedy impatiently explains that no such understanding exists anymore—Robert’s mother will have to be sent to the home. Robert insists that the “home” is really a gas chamber, and he begins to weep.
In this section, we learn new, shocking information about the Norsefire state: the elderly are sent to gas chambers when they’re too old to work. The heartlessness of the Fingermen is obvious—presumably Creedy has a mother of his own, whom he’s either protected using his influence, or sent to the gas chamber.
Themes
Evey watches as Robert cries. He screams, “We shouldn’t have to live like this,” and he begins pushing and shoving, and a fight breaks out. Quickly, Gordon leads Evey out of the club. Outside, Evey begins to weep too, saying that Robert was right—humans shouldn’t have to live like this. Gordon nods, and asks Evey what she’s going to do about it. As they walk away from the club, we see V watching them.
Even after Evey rejects V’s radicalism, she can’t entirely forget what she sees everyday. She recognizes that V is right to be dissatisfied with the status quo in England. The chapter ends with a reminder that V hasn’t disappeared from Evey’s life altogether—he’s still watching her, and presumably has new plans for her.
Themes
