V for Vendetta

Evey: “I…I’ve got a job in munitions, but the money is, you know, it isn’t enough…I really need that money. I’d be ok. I mean, I’m sixteen. I know what I’m doing…”

Fingerman: “No. You don’t know what you’re doing. Because if you did you wouldn’t have picked a vice detail on stake-out.”

Evey: “Oh Christ, you’re a Fingerman.”

Evey decides to pursue sex work to earn the money she needs to live. Like the majority of the novel’s women, she realizes that Norsefire doesn’t give women any avenue to power except sexuality. This quote also introduces the Fingermen: The Finger’s employees in Norsefire’s police state.

V: “Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the Gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

Evey: “Oh. Oh. The houses of Parliament! They’ve…they’ve been…did you do that?”

V: “I did that.”

One of the novel’s most famous lines is also one of its only explicit references to Guy Fawkes. V’s destruction of Parliament is an allusion to the 17th-century Gunpowder Plot, in which Fawkes and other revolutionaries attempted to blow up Parliament and kill the king. V styles himself as Fawkes reborn; rather than ushering in a Catholic revolution, he wants to usher in an anarchist one.

Evey: “It…it’s unbelievable! All of these paintings and books…I didn’t even know there were things like this.”

V: “You couldn’t be expected to know. They have eradicated culture…tossed it away like a fistful of dead roses…all the books, all the films, all the music.”

The Interconnected Tools of Fascism that Norsefire uses to control Britain result in censoring and destroying culturally diverse artifacts. V collects these remnants of the past world in his Shadow Gallery. This line also foreshadows Valerie’s letter, in which roses are a symbol for cultural diversity.