Summary
On January 5, 1998, V puts on a magic show for Evey, showing her a trick in which he makes a rabbit disappear from a cage. Later the two dance under a disco ball. Evey grows anxious and stammers about her curiosity about why V doesn’t try to sleep with her. She says maybe he doesn’t fancy women. V says maybe he’s her father. He replies by donning his cloak and asking Evey to put on a blindfold and come with him. On the street Evey feels cold and removes her blindfold to find they are on a deserted street. V asks where they are and repeats lines from the Enid Blyton book he previously read her. He suddenly says he isn’t her father, because her father is dead. She reaches out to him and pulls at his cloak, revealing a coatrack and tape recorder playing his voice.
Chapter Two opens with Derek Almond’s funeral. Rosemary narrates, addressing Derek, saying no one seemed interested, except Roger Dascombe, who held her hand too long and made her feel sick. But she is alone and needs help; things look different as a widow. Meanwhile, Evey wanders dark, rainy streets. She enters a house and grows terrified when she sees a man lying on the floor. He reaches out to her and she runs from the house. As Evey narrates about her conflicted decision to take Dascombe up on his offer to take her out, V goes to a movie theater, where he removes and rolls up a vintage movie poster. On a propaganda poster, he draws a V.
On February 23, three men at the TV broadcasting studio at Jordan Tower are watching a racist propaganda video when V arrives and kills them. He kills more people on his way to the broadcasting room, where, revealing a dynamite vest, he makes the staff play the tape he has brought. The video broadcasts across London, showing V sitting in a chair. He speaks as if he is a boss addressing an employee he is about to fire, saying humanity has slipped and he’s thinking about letting it go.
V’s video continues in Chapter Four, and V continues the workplace analogy, meanwhile showing images of warfare and impoverished children. He says the management is bad, comparing the Leader to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. But it was the people who elected them; the people could have stopped them, but they had no spine or pride. V says he will give the viewers two years to show improvement in their work as humans. Meanwhile, police have broken into the TV studio and started firing at V, who falls through a window and lies on the floor full of bullet holes and surrounded by glass.
Chapter Five opens with Finch walking down a beach, reflecting on what happened at the TV studio. He arrived and pulled off V’s mask to reveal that it was actually Dascombe lying on the ground. Peter Creedy, who took over for Almond, said anyone can make a mistake. Creedy then said he must be sensitive because Finch was sleeping with Surridge. This enraged Finch, who punched Creedy in the face. The Leader sent Finch on vacation. The point of view switches to show Evey living with an older man named Gordon, who brings her breakfast in bed. She claims not to think about the man who kicked her out; Gordon looks at the front page of The Daily Mirror, which reports on V’s video.
In Chapter Six, Evey is at a variety show with Gordon, who buys her drinks. She observes Rosemary Almond being removed from the club when her card is declined. She and Gordon watch Creedy talking to Gordon’s friend Robert, who says he had an arrangement with Almond regarding his mother. Creedy says his mother is too old and should go to a home, though both men know “the home” is a euphemism for the murder of elderly people. Robert grows despondent and says they shouldn’t have to live like this; he wishes the bomb had hit London and killed them all. Men rush in to beat him with clubs. Outside Evey vomits and tells Gordon that Roger is right, they shouldn’t have to live like this. V watches them from a rooftop across the street.
Chapter Seven begins on June 11, 1998, with two men chasing Gordon down a street; he runs into his home. On April 15, earlier that year, he and Evey are in the kitchen. He shyly says she’s been in the front room a few months now, and he invites her to stay in his room. She smiles and asks him to kiss her, then they have passionate sex. The scene cuts back to June 11, and Gordon tells Evey to lock herself in the bathroom. Gordon talks to the men through the door until one of them pierces the door with a sword. Evey comes down and finds him lying on the floor. While watching him, Evey remembers her mother’s death, her father being taken away, and V abandoning her. With a tear on her cheek, she moves through the house, remembering the sex she had with him. She finds a gun in the top drawer.
In Chapter Eight, Evey runs into Rosemary outside the Kitty Kat Keller. Rose says she is looking for the stage entrance, because she has a job there. Evey waits in the alley until the men who killed Gordon, recognizable by their Scottish accents, arrive. She stands with her gun trained on them. However, a man comes up behind her and grabs her face.
Chapter Nine begins in a dream Evey has. On her birthday her father leads her upstairs. He is replaced by Gordon, and the bedroom is the bishop’s room. He starts to kiss her when her mother enters and she apologizes for being in bed with her father. Her mother is unconcerned and says the Punch and Judy show has begun. At the show, a man dressed as V but with a different mask knocks audience members heads off with a bat. She runs to find her father or Gordon but is being chased by V. She runs up a flight of spiral stairs, then takes an elevator, and V captures her. She wakes as an adult in a cell; through the bars, she sees the government’s Strength Through Purity, Purity Through Faith poster.
In Chapter Ten, Evey sees a rat in her cell. She eats the morsel of food she’s given but can’t sleep. A guard comes in and violently blindfolds her, leading her in the dark to a bright room with men and a film playing. It’s a surveillance video showing Evey about to be raped by the Fingermen, just before V saved her. The men explain how they chloroformed her outside the Kitty Kat Keller before a raid. They’re charging her with the attempted murder of Peter Creedy, a frequent member of the club. They take her to another room where her long blonde hair is shaved off. Back in her cell, someone gives her a vaginal examination; she thinks it’s the woman. In her cell she finds Valerie, the last prisoner, left a scrawl of writing on toilet paper, stuffed into a hole. While imprisoned in this unknown location, Evey reads and rereads the letter.
Analysis
Book 2 begins by with a further intensification of V’s enigmatic nature: when Evey tries to figure out who he is, curious to know if he might be her father, he leads her outside. In contrast to the pleasant environment of the Shadow Gallery, V brings Evey to a cold and deserted street, tricking her into thinking he is with her when he has in fact abandoned her without giving a reason.
However, it will turn out that V has planned this event as part of his effort to help her find freedom from the invisible chains that bind her. Later, when he watches her speaking to Gordon outside the Kitty-Kat Keller, it is clear that V is monitoring her life outside the Shadow Gallery.
Mirroring Evey’s sense of desertion and desperation, Rosemary Almond is left despondent after her husband’s death. Though her husband died in the line of duty, she receives no financial help from the government after her husband’s death, while Dascombe preys on her in her vulnerable state. These injustices seed an antipathy for the state that will reach a climactic conclusion when she kills the Leader toward the end of the book.
With his attack on Jordan Tower, V targets the televisual propaganda arm of the state. In an extended metaphor, V addresses humanity in the manner of a company boss. The workplace analogy compares world leaders to bad management. However, he reminds the people that they are the ones who elected those managers; it is within the people’s power to take control of the company—i.e. the world—and show better judgment in deciding who runs it.
Gordon’s death serves as a final straw for Evey, evoking the deaths of her parents and her abandonment by V. Driven to vengeance, Evey takes Gordon’s gun and waits outside the Kitty-Kat Keller. Just before she shoots Alistair, however, she is kidnapped. The next chapters focus heavily on the theme of torture: Evey’s head is shaved, she is nearly drowned, she is violated medically, and she is kept in a windowless cell. To emphasize Evey’s confusion at why she is being held and her sense of hopelessness, the reader only knows as much as does about her situation. For the time being, Valerie’s letter is her only solace. However, the next chapters will reveal that this is all part of V’s plan to train her as his successor.
