2007, Volume 5, Number 1
Transfixed and Transfigured
The influences of Greco-Roman society on modern day art and literature are boundless. Charles Martindale remarks that “From the twelfth century onwards Ovid has had a more wide ranging impact on the art and culture of the West than any other classical writer or poet” (Martindale 187). From Shakespeare to Faust and even in modern soap operas the Roman poets have had a lasting impact. Even comic books have not escaped the overwhelming influence of the Romans. The book “V for Vendetta” by Alan Moore and David Lloyd has very clear thematic ties to Roman literature, and especially to the themes of metamorphoses and preservation of culture. A strong connection can be drawn to Ovid’s Metamorphoses and also the tale of Amor and Psyche in the “Metamorphoses of Lucius (The Golden Ass)” by Apuleius. Following is a brief summary of the story of “V for Vendetta”, and an exploration of the metamorphoses theme as it connects to Ovid and the tale of Amor and Psyche.“V for Vendetta” takes place in a totalitarian Britain cut off from the outside world which is crumbling around it. The title character V is a modern day incarnation of Guy Faulkes, encouraging us to: Remember, remember the fifth of November, The gunpowder treason and plot, I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot. (Moore 14) He is a terrorist in every sense of the word, destroying Big Ben and the headquarters of the nation’s three spy agencies--the Eye, Ear and Mouth--and plotting eventually to destroy the parliament. He is never shown without his Guy Faulkes mask, presumably hiding a disfigurement obtained while having experiments performed upon him in a Nazi-esque concentration camp. He stumbles upon an unlikely and unwilling successor to his throne named Evee, an aspiring prostitute who mistakenly propositions a gang of government thugs and finds herself in need of saving. Throughout the book we learn of the atrocities committed by both the British government and by our hero himself. The tale ends with V allowing himself to be killed so that Evee, who he has seemingly tortured to get her to agree with him, can take his place and be a kinder, gentler face behind the mask.
The tale of V and Evee is obviously one of metamorphoses, V trying to change Britain to what it once was and could be again, and Evee transforming from an uncultured prostitute to the savior of a nation. Ovid’s Metamorphoses begins in chaos and slowly moves through the exploits of both the Gods and mortals to the eventual “peace and stability” found under Augustan rule. This peace and stability, however, was more a matter of enforcement than enlightenment. Augustus has to kick his own family out of Rome for not following his strict rules (Harris and Platzner 956). This situation seems to be the same point Britain is at in Vendetta. Twenty years previously, to avoid involvement in WWIII, they made the U.S. take their weapons out of Britain. Now, as the rest of the world is fighting and collapsing around them, they are living in a relatively secure police state. Yes, they don’t have to fight, but they’ve also lost all culture, music, and diversity: “They eradicated some cultures more thoroughly than others” (Moore 17). Blacks, Jews, gays, lesbians, and anyone who didn’t agree with the government were sent to concentration camps and destroyed. I think this is the fear Ovid had for Rome, that while it may have seemed to have metamorphosed into something great, it may have been at the cost of the people. In a similar vein, V blows up a statue of Lady Justice, talking to her as if she has turned against him, has turned against Britain, just as Ovid fears the law has turned against Romans. All throughout Vendetta’s imaginary Britain there are posters proclaiming “Strength through purity, purity through faith” (Moore 2) which seems directly related to Augustus trying to bring back elements of Greek society, particularly the worship of Apollo. How ironic then that Apollo wasn’t pure, that he caused the ruin of so many young men and women, just as the false purity of this future Britain only thinly veiled its contamination. V himself can’t ensure the metamorphoses of Britain, just as Ovid can’t be sure that the metamorphoses of Rome is a positive one. V does, however, ensure that Evee has the potential to save the Britain he cares so much for, just as Ovid is able to influence readers of the future, not to save Rome, but to carry on its stories and the stories of Greece before it.
We quickly learn that the most important part of the story of Vendetta is of Evee’s transformation. At first she seems the most unlikely candidate to save Britain. She is young, ignorant, and utterly brainwashed. During her transformation we see quite a few Metamorphoses parallels. When we first meet Evee, she has made the unfortunate mistake of propositioning the “fingers” (state sponsored thugs) and since prostitution is illegal they are in the eyes of the law allowed to have their way with her and then dispose of her. V has done nothing to save the hundreds of prostitutes he has seen suffer this same fate, but he saves her because he sees something different. Were these men bad? Yes, without a doubt, but they were slaughtered for doing their jobs. This seemed to me very similar to the story of Acteon and Diana (Kline 45). Acteon stumbled upon Diana while she was bathing and stared in shock at seeing the naked goddess before him. Instead of warning him or giving him some sort of light punishment, Diana destroys him, because he has looked on something no mortal should ever see. This seemed very similar to V destroying the fingers because contemplated touching this person who seemed so important to him, his newfound goddess. He had let every other prostitute die, but this stumbling virgin merited his “divine” intervention.
Another parallel from the Metamorphoses was in the story of Byblis and Caunus (Kline 160) and also the story of Myrra (Kline 175). Evee had lost her father when she was extremely young and almost every dream she had about V’s identity ended up with her in bed in her father’s arms, which didn’t really bother her. Obviously this was because she had been robbed of her father and missed him, which obviously is not the case with Myrra, but perhaps she (Myrra) felt ignored and this was the best way to be “daddy’s little girl.” Evee desperately wanted her father to be alive, even if he was the man she was in love with. Part of her metamorphosis however, made this impossible, because the longer she clung to the idea that everything could end up okay, the longer she was prevented from actively participating in changing London. The biggest change in Evee came after she ran away from V. Her lover, who hated what Britain had become but was afraid to do anything about it, was murdered by the authorities. V “saved” Evee from certain capture and death, but instead of telling her, he kept her in a cell and punished her and threatened her to her breaking point. This will be discussed more when we get to the comparison with Amor and Psyche. During her “captivity”, she began receiving letters from “Valerie” who was a prisoner in the cell next to her.
Valerie was imprisoned for no reason other than that she loved a woman. Her girlfriend had been abducted while on the way to the market one day and was tortured into confessing she was a lesbian and that Valerie was her “wife.” This is reminiscent of at least two tales from the Metamorphoses. The first being that of Iphis and Ianthe (Kline 165) Iphis was born to a father who swore to kill his newborn child should it be born a girl, so her mother disguised her as a boy her entire childhood. Eventually she was betroathed to Ianthe, whom she loved but wasn’t allowed to love. She wasn’t ashamed, she was just not permitted. The Gods ended up pitying her and changing her into a boy so she could love Ianthe. Unfortunately for Valerie, such a transformation could not occur; she continued to love her girlfriend and to love the faceless person in the cell next door because they couldn’t take that away from her. The other tale this reminds one of is that of Orpheus and Eurydice (Kline 170). Valerie claims that even though her girlfriend caused her eventual suffering and death she still loved her: “Oh, God I loved her, I never blamed her” (Moore 159). Eurydice also could not fault her lover, as she was being whisked back to hell she didn’t blame Orpheus for looking back, because he did it out of his love for her. Eventually, Evee’s “captor” told her she had to confess to helping the terrorist or she would be taken out behind the chemical sheds and shot. At this point she says she would rather die and is consequently let free. She has learned to see past herself and accept the responsibilities she has in being V’s partner. She is encouraged to “become transfixed…become transfigured…Forever” (Kline 172). And she is.
Throughout Vendetta there are many themes and tropes that have striking similarities to the tale by Ovid. In Metamorphoses quite often characters were transformed into birds to prevent their destruction, guaranteeing their eternal freedom. In Vendetta, no one literally turned into a bird, but the freedom trope was still present. Every time V destroyed some symbol of totalitarian Britain there were fireworks in the sky, symbolizing the freedom he wanted the stupefied citizens of London to have. Another interesting similarity is between the “Leader” of the society, aptly named Leader, and Echo. Leader runs the society based on what a supercomputer named either Fate or Destiny tells him to do, and he ends up falling in love with it, believing it to be truly divine. This seemed very much to me like the story of Echo. She loved Narcissus, who through his rejection of everyone other than himself, actually ruled them, telling them what they couldn’t ever dream of having. She loved someone that fate wouldn’t allow, and the Leader loved Fate herself, who due to her electronic nature could never love him back. Through this love the leader of this society was transformed into nothing more than a hollow voice, repeating the words of his imaginary lover, an Echo in every way. At the end of Vendetta, V allows himself to be killed so that Evee can take his place. She realizes that she no longer needs to know who is behind the mask because she is now behind the mask. V is no longer a person, but an idea. So why did the person who used to be V have to die? This seems very similar to the transformation of Orpheus’s male lovers. If they would have been allowed to live they would have continued to follow Orpheus, insisting that he pay attention to them. But this would have detracted from his love of Eurydice, so they had to die. V had to die at the end of the book so that Evee would be able to help Britain in a non-violent way now that the anarchy V had created had run its course. He was a terrorist and bringer of death, he couldn’t continue to live because he would hold back Evee, just as Orpheus’s male lovers had to die so Orpheus could still be with Eurydice in Hades.
Vendetta did something interesting that most comics don’t do. Typically there are thought bubbles and text boxes explaining what is going on for those who didn’t quite get the pictures. The author decided to abandon these standards however, and let the story tell itself through dialogue and images instead. These seem to parallel the structure of the Metamorphoses where much more time is spent describing scenery to give an image of what a scene actually looks like than on the actual plot itself (Otis 52). Ovid is in essence constructing a comic book without pictures!
In Amor and Psyche, Psyche undergoes a very similar metamorphosis through torture as Evee does. Even after Evee was kidnapped to the “Shadow Gallery” and Psyche was plunged into darkness, neither of these women were particularly unhappy in the situations they were in before they were literally and figuratively tortured. But Psyche herself, through the help of her sisters, realized she needed more than a faceless, nameless lover. She snuck up on Amor in the night expecting to find a monster and instead found Cupid himself. It is important to note that most interpretations of this tale paint Psyche as the typical dumb woman for doing this. Neumann claims that she is causing her own ruin by listening to her sisters (71), while Conte says she is motivated by nothing more than a “silly desire to please her sisters” (565). In my mind this couldn’t be farther from the truth. It would have been silly of her to not question her constantly absent, invisible husband. Just as it only made sense for Evee to question the true identity of V.
Psyche ended up going through hell (literally) to find out whom she really was. After all of her unfair tests and trials she emerged victorious and with a clearer image of herself. She embarked on a Herculean quest, and emerged stronger physically and mentally, more than Hercules could have done! Evee also went through hell. Her hair was shorn; she was beaten, starved, and told the story of someone else who was about to die for her beliefs. Evee didn’t even know she had these beliefs until she was being punished for them, just as Psyche didn’t realize how strong she was until she was being punished. Both of these women transformed into complete human beings because of what was done to them. The males of the stories proved ineffectual compared to these transformed females. Psyche was able to become a goddess, and Evee was able (we must assume) to lead Britain back to what they had lost.
An undeniable aspect of both tales of Metamorphoses and of “V for Vendetta” is the idea of preservation. Ovid and Apuleius were trying to preserve the history of the Greek predecessors who were on the verge of being lost, and V is trying to preserve the legacy of humanity that was so close to being extinguished. Otis says “Ovid put into it [Metamorphoses] a very large part of the ancient mythology-all the unbelievable Gods, demigods, miracles and variegated wonders-and somehow brought them alive” (Otis 2). V is carrying on Ovid’s legacy, attempting to keep alive all the great works of humanity. Neither believed they alone could save their lost and confused societies, but they could provide the tools to give the next generation a fighting chance. We’d have no “V” without Ovid, and can only hope to preserve Ovid’s thoughts, and the works of all of Greco-Roman society, with the ideals presented to us by Moore through “V”.
WORKS CITED
Conte, Gian Biagio. Latin Literature: A History. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987
Harris, Stephen and Gloria Platzner. Classical Mythology: Images and Insights. New York: McGraw Hill, 2004.
Martindale, Charles. Ovid Renewed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Neumann, Erich. Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine. New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1956.
Otis, Brooks. Ovid as Epic Poet. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
Galinsky, G. Karl. Ovid’s Metamorphoses: An Introduction to Basic Aspects. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975.
Moore, Alan and David Lloyd. V for Vendetta. New York: Warner Brothers Entertainment, 1988. (All images from this work)
This paper was written for ENG 303: Modern Literature. The project was a research paper linking ancient and modern mythologies.