Oscar Owens
Jennings
8/16/11
A book with literary merit is said to be one that invites and rewards the reader and does
not, like ephemeral works in such popular genres as detective or romance fiction, yield all (or
nearly all) of its pleasures of thought and feeling the first time through. This definition, while
very functional and simple, is both vague, and for the most part, bland. A true understanding of
literary merit involves examples and the understanding of novels that meet this literary merit
criterion such as Alan Moore’s and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta and Albert Camus’s The
Stranger. To really appreciate literary merit, one must comprehend what novels are and what
they truly stand for: ideas. The reader is “rewarded” with the books ideas, and “invited” to
think about them. But also, readings will not always be the same because their ideas are
complex and often numerous. What contributes to these different readings and also separates
books of literary merit from ephemeral works is that the ideas of books with literary merit are
not stated directly; they are shown through characters, symbols, or other literary elements.
V for Vendetta is a graphic novel about England as a totalitarian state after WWII. A man
with no identity who is known only as V who was tortured and used for dangerous drug testing
in a concentration camp during the war. He begins a revolution and either kills or greatly affects
every major character in the novel. The novel, though having many ideas, is mainly about two
things: freedom and identity. Throughout the novel, V is bringing about the destruction of the
England’s fascist government to start a new anarchists state. This obvious governmental
freedom is not the only freedom expressed in the book, however. As Evey and eventually Finch
learn about and begin to understand V, the reader gets to see other freedoms V stands for as
well. Freedom of knowledge, freedom of art, and freedom from one’s self are some of these
freedoms. A perfect example of how Moore and Lloyd used changing or developing characters
to express their ideas was when Finch has an epiphany while visiting Larkhill, the internment
camp where V became the terrorist that he now was, and not soon after taking LSD. The LSD
makes him believe that he is a prisoner in the camp and makes him reflect on his life. Finch
thinks to himself, “How did I get here to this stinking place: my job, my life: my conscience: my
prison… Who imprisoned me here? Who keeps me here? Who can release me? Who’s
controlling and constraining my life, except… …me” (Moore, 215). Just after this realization,
Finch runs up on to a hill completely naked just as V and Evey did when they became truly free
from the restraints they put on themselves.
The second central idea in V for Vendetta is identity. Throughout the entire novel, V’s
identity remains unknown. He has no age, name, or family. All that we know about V is his
actions and what he stands for. Even with no identity however, V remains the most influential
person in the novel and changes not only most of the characters, but all of England. That’s
because V was more than just a person. As V says himself, “There’s no flesh or blood within this
cloak to kill. There’s only an idea” (Moore, 236). V was much more than any person could ever
be because he was not a person. Having no identity left him with only his idea, and that was
much more powerful and influential than a regular person could ever be. As Evey says while she
is debating taking V’s mask off of his corpse, “If I take off that mask, something will go away
forever, be diminished because whoever you are isn’t as big as the idea of you” (Moore, 250).
This idea of identity is further enforced when Evey puts on one if V’s masks and becomes the
new V for the people. Also, in a similar and almost ironic sense, V takes away the governments
identity in his attempt to destroy it; and with only its idea left, it soon collapsed. The
government had become as much like a single person as it possibly could. The police were
called the finger, detectives were called the nose, the leader was called the head, and the
supercomputer that controlled many of the government’s actions was called fate. These human
parts made the people trust in the government more and made them almost brainwashed to
what the government was doing. V strategically destroyed the means of operation for
government organizations such as the mouth and the eye making the government less of a
person that it was before, and when the people were able to then truly understand the
government’s idea of fascism, they revolted.
Albert Camus’s The Stranger is a book split into two parts. The first part is about
Meursault’s life as an average person who in the end kills an Arab man. The second part is
about Meursault’s trial and his time spent in prison. The central idea of The Stranger is Camus’s
philosophy of absurdism: a philosophy that can be seen as part of existentialism. One way of
looking at absurdism is the meaning of life and the many proponents of it are unobtainable and
searching for them is pointless. The solution to this in Camus’s philosophy is to accept the
absurd for what it is and to just live life. In the novel, Meursault represents absurdism and lives
his life by its values unknowingly until the end. One example of this absurdism is in the
beginning of the novel when Meursault finds out about his mother’s death. “Maman died
today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: ‘Mother deceased.
Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday”
(Camus, 3). Meursault shows no emotion or care for his mother’s death and doesn’t even
remember when she died. Later at the funeral Meursault doesn’t care about seeing the body or
honoring her in any special way, and doesn’t even remember how old she was. This is just one
example of how Camus shows that an event that most people view as extremely important can
really be nothing at all. Another key example of this is when Meursault kills an Arab man on the
beach. When he is later asked why he killed the man, Meursault responds with the honest
answer, “It was because of the sun” (Camus, 103). Throughout the novel there are countless
examples of absurdism and the absurdist view on important aspects of life such as religion,
happiness, and love.
V for Vendetta and The Stranger are both novels of literary merit because of their many
and complex ideas. Their ideas are both rewarding and invite the reader to think about them in
aspect to their own life. Each time reading these novels, discovering different ideas, different
aspects of an idea, or a new understanding of an idea all together can be achieved due to their
indirect deployment of ideas through characters, symbols, or any other literary devices.