Don’t Run From It, Evey
A character study of Evey Hammond from V for Vendetta
Fear is a choice. A choice many make every day. A choice that has time and time again defined the trajectory of human history. Fear is the plentiful fodder of war, of hatred, and often of systematic oppression. It comes to many disguised as necessity, as the only way to survive; this is always fiction. The acute perception of danger is crucial to the propagation of life. Fear has evolved in the psyche with an undeniable amount of purpose. This purpose has been lost, however, to the rampant exploitation of the human fear response from all angles of society. Crippled by doubts and anxiety, many succumb to living half a life, feeling powerless in the shaping of their destiny. Through a series of events following a chance encounter with a mysterious vigilante (Hugo Weaving), Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) is able to transcend her oppressive fear in order to internalize the true meaning of freedom and choice in V for Vendetta’s (2005) dystopian world.
Evey lives in a world ravaged by fear-based politics.
Government records indicate that “her parents were political activists…detained when she was twelve.” In V for Vendetta’s Britain, the word “detained” has dark connotations.
Evey painfully recalls hiding under a bed while violent task force police force her mother into a body bag: “It was like those black bags erased them from the face of the Earth.”
Evey explains that her “brother was one of the students at St. Mary’s”, a school targeted with a deadly virus in order to spread fear throughout the populous. Following the death of her brother, Evey’s “parents became political.” In this dystopia, people with unsavory feelings towards the state are considered “undesirable” and are swiftly exterminated.
After the loss of her parents, Evey entered a program known as the “Juvenile Reclamation Project”. This upbringing made Evey very aware of the realities of authoritarianism; she took to living with her head down, never challenging the status quo.
One night Evey is cornered by undercover secret police while on the way to accommodate an invitation from her boss, Gordon Deitrich (Stephen Fry). Just as Evey is about to fall victim to sexual abuse, a masked vigilante named V is introduced, saving her from the police and establishing himself as the film’s protagonist. Evey accompanies her newfound acquaintance and rescuer to a rooftop where she watches in a state approaching panic as he conducts a musical demolition of a government building.
The next day V forcefully enters and broadcasts a message from BTN, the British Television Network, where Evey is working as a runner. In a moment of boldness, Evey maces a detective poised to shoot V. Knocked unconscious, she later wakes at V’s residence and is seemingly horrified by her actions.
“God, what have I done?” Evey cries. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she adds. “You did what you thought was right”, V reminds her. Still Evey struggles to understand her behavior, retaliating, “No… I must have been out of my mind.” It is clear that while Evey does not share the sentiments of the brutal police state, she does not yet find value in acting out against it. Positive change is not tangible to Evey. She apprises V, “Every time I’ve seen this world change, it’s been for the worse.”
Soon Evey appeals to V with a request to aid him in his systematic rebellion: “I know this world is screwed up. Believe me, I know it better than most. Which is why I wanted to ask, if there is anything I can do to help make it right.” She dons a disguise and joins him in a plan to assassinate the corrupt Bishop Lilliman (John Standing). In the midst of their scheduled rendezvous, however, Evey panics and flees.
Seeking refuge, she knocks on the door of her former boss at BTN. Gordon Deitrich accepts Evey into his home without hesitation. Evey is surprised at Gordon’s relative ease in harboring her. She speaks apologetically, “I know it’s horrible of me, to put you in this situation. … you could be in terrible trouble.” Gordon silences her concerns and reveals that he to shares in contempt for present day Britain, hoarding banned works such as a copy of the Koran and a satirical painting of Britain’s feared dictator, High Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt).
He then lay bare that he is in fact a closeted homosexual. Like other aspects of life in this dystopia, deviation from the established cultural norms warrants severe punishment. The slightest disclosure of Gordon’s sexuality to the public would be enough to shatter his social standing as well as get him permanently imprisoned. “You wear a mask for so long”, Gordon explains to Evey, “you forget who you were beneath it.”
Evey is subsequently captured by whom she believes is also the government:
You’ve been charged with three counts of murder, the bombing of
government property, conspiracy to commit terrorism, treason and
sedition, the penalty for which is death by firing squad. You have one
chance, and only one chance, to save your life. You must tell us the
identity or whereabouts of code name V.
Within her cell, Evey begins to transform. She is tortured for information daily, yet never submits to the requests of her shadowy oppressors. Evey begins receiving letters written on toilet paper from what appears to be a neighboring prisoner named Valerie. “I shall die here,” Valerie writes, “Every inch of me shall me shall perish. Every inch… but one. An inch. It is small, and it is fragile… and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.”
Evey finally tells the guard that she would “rather die behind the chemical sheds” than give them any information on V. “Then you have no fear anymore, your completely free” a voice responds. The doors no longer locked, Evey walks out of her prison into V’s unmistakable residence.
He tries to explain his actions: “Your own father said artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes I created a lie, but because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.” Evey has found “something that mattered more to her than [her] life.” She is not phased when confronted with her impending death, “[she was] calm, [she was] still”, she is finally free from fear.
The powers at be had taken everything from Evey throughout her life, everything except her life. She had been living as though that was all she had: a fragile physical life, something that needed protecting. In that cell Evey realizes the true power of her individual self. She may have been imprisoned, either in a cell or by the repressive world at large, but that can never define her.
Freedom is a choice Evey makes when she would rather die than give into a corrupt establishment.
V subjects Evey to a reenactment of what was done to him because he allegedly had no other way to help her transcend her fear. Similarly, dictators such as Sutler often cite protection of the people as justification for oppressive measures. Evey sees this contradiction within V but is not altogether alienated by it. He is a morally ambiguous complex character, displaying a variety of strengths and weakness tied to his conflicted personality traits.
V reasons to Evey, “What was done to me created me. It’s a basic principle of the universe.” Evey understands but challenges his logic, “and [so] they created a monster.” V invokes chaos in the name of justice while Sutler wields order to coerce control and grow in power.
Evey announces that she cannot stay with V and leaves but promises to see him once more before November 5th, the day he plans to blow up the Parliament. She comes to him on “the eve of [his] revolution.” In an underground tunnel system with train tracks that lead underneath Parliament, V reveals that Evey “made [him] understand that [he] was wrong.” He shows Evey a train rigged with explosives: “the choice to pull this lever is not mine to make. … the world that I… helped shape will end tonight.” Leaving to confront Sutler in person and knowingly die, V leaves the choice to destroy parliament up to Evey.
She chooses to fulfil V’s plan even at gunpoint, stating “he was right. … this country needs more than a building right now. It needs hope.”
Evey Hammond is the embodiment of V’s proclaimed personal motto, “By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.”
No longer coerced and controlled by fear, she has learned to see the world as it is. Life is “a perfect pattern”, a never ending chain reaction that “we are all a part of… and all trapped by.” In coming to terms with her place in the world, she can finally see the supreme importance of her own choices.
By learning to stay true to herself, Evey taps into true power: collective belief.
Parliament stands an authorial symbol of oppression developed in the context of V for Vendetta: “Symbols are given power by the people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people blowing up a building can change the world.”
