Commentaire Composé en anglais d'un livre de Victor Hugo

1. The first thing that reveals us England has become an authoritarian society is the media. At the beginning of the comic, someone starts to talk at the radio. He says that he is the “voice of fate”, he shows himself as the futur, the destiny of the nation. After that, he starts the weather report and tells us everything about the weather today with a lot of details (like when it will start to rain). It shows us the development of government's technologies, in some way it is a good thing but in this story, England uses it to survey people. Then, the radio says something about the Brixton and Streatham areas. They have been put on “quarantine”, we don't know exactly why and the voice proves us that they can know a lot of thing so they are surementely hidding the truth behind “health and safety” reasons. Furthermore, the voice tells us that the police made a raid in seventeen homes just for twenty peoples. So they searched in innocents peoples's houses without evidences.

In some pages, we will learn that the radio will not tell the truth about the parliament bombing. Finally the radio will not tell us any news about others nations or sports, music, …

The second thing that reveals us how government is in England is the group of men in the street. The government gives them the power to judge and punish people. They will use it to try to rape and kill a young girl because she tried to sell her body. Their name is an other clue: the “fingermen”. They are a part of one body (the nation) control by one head or one man. And finally, they said that if they failed, their boss will “have their guts”.

Now let's talk about the others parts of the body. In this extract we just hear about four (five with the fingers) parts of the government: the Nose, the Eye, the Mouth and the Ears. They all work for the man who is surmentely the “leader” of England. They all survey or control the population: the Eye with cameras, the Ears with phone surveillance, the Nose by inspecting criminal scenes to find somes clues (at the parliament) and the Mouth by broadcasting on the radio. The “leader” (like Mr.Almond called him), surementely the Head, is giving order to the parts of the body and they are afraid of him. Moreover he talk about propaganda.

Finally we will talk about things that we can see in the street or in other places. There is a lot of camera with “for your protection” write. The government is lying because they use it to survey peoples. In the street where the girl has been agress, there is a poster with a slogan :”STRENGTH THROUGH PURITY. PURITY THROUGH FAITH.”. We can compare it to “WAR IS PEACE / FREEDOM IS SLAVERY / IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” in 1984. In the Mouth, there is also : “PUT YOUR TRUST IN FATE”.

2. The Gunpowder plot was an assassination attempt against the King of England by destroying the parliament in 1605. Catesby wanted to replace the King because he was against his politic with the Catholics. V is wearing a mask of Guy Fawkes, an other fellow plotter and want to blow up the parliament because he is against the government in England.

3. In the house we just see two movies' posters : Son of Frankenstein and White Heat. They both talk about monsters (physically or mentally speaking) who are reject by society. And two books : Utopia and Mein Kampf. There authors presents their opinion, the best society for them.

They show us that V is cultivated and possess cultural items despite the interdiction of the government. It also shows us that he want to change the society and he feels alone and he is maybe crazy.

Book 1 – Chapter Two

1. Maybe because he is angry or/and he wants to criticize his colleague.

2. The media are tolerated because they are a part of the “body” without them the government is mute. Moreover it allows the government to do propaganda and control peoples by making them become more “stupid” by broadcasting some program.

3. We can see a lot of books: Faust (by Goethe), Don Quixote (by Cervantes), Ivanhoe (W.Scott), Gulliver's Tale (J.Swift), Hard Times (C.Dickens), Frankenstein (M.Shelley), Divine Comedy (D.Alighieri), two

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