V

V's History

The background and identity of V is largely unknown. He is at one point an inmate at the infamous "Larkhill Resettlement Camp", one of, if not the worst of many concentration camps where political prisoners, homosexuals, Jews, Pakistanis, Muslims and probably all non-Europeans are exterminated by Britain's new fascist regime, Norsefire. While there, he is part of a group of prisoners who are subjected to horrific medical experimentation, conducted by Dr. Delia Surridge, involving artificially-designed hormone injection. Lewis Prothero is the camp's commandant, and a paedophile priest, Father Anthony Lilliman, is at the camp to lend "spiritual support". All prisoners so injected soon die under gruesome circumstances, with the sole exception of "the man in room five" ("V" in Roman numerals). Although there is nothing physically wrong with him, Surridge theorizes that his mind had been warped by the experimentation. Still, his actions seem to maintain a twisted logic to them. The experiments actually yield some beneficial results: he develops Olympic-level reflexes, increased strength, and incredibly expanded mental capacity (as demonstrated consistently throughout the novel, V is a genius in the fields of explosives, martial arts, philosophy, literature, politics, computer hacking and chemistry).