V is for...

I just finished reading Alan Moore's famous graphic novel, "V for Vendetta". (mild spoilers follow, for those who care) Story content aside, the book brought me to an interesting question: how human should your hero turn out to be? In "V", Moore never reveals the identity of his hero. He wears a mask throughout the entire story, and even when his time to fight evil is at an end and he passes on the tourch to another, he still does not reveal his identity, but instead tells his replacement, "you must discover who is behind the mask, but you must never know who it is". It ends up being a tricky way of saying that he wants his sucessor to find out on her own that she is to wear the mask after him.

So the question remains and plagues: why doesn't Moore reveal the identity of his hero? After all, the character is extremely interesting, one of the most interesting heroes in all of comics (Morpheus aside, for all you Sandman fans). So why not tell us about the man behind the mask? I'll wager a guess that I think most would come up with: whenever a secret identity is revealed, it's usually disappointing. The only time it's interesting is when you find out that a regular joe is actually a superhero: that peter parker is Spider-Man, that the effeminite Percey is the dashing Scarlett Pimpernell, that elwin ransom is the Pendragon of Logres, and that Jeshua the carpenter is Jehova the Almighty. But a revelation of the opposite sort is always somewhat of a let-down. You see this in many Mystery novels, where the situation is indeed mysterious, even magical, but then you find out why so and so was murdered, who did it, what their political motivations were, etc. It's always a let down, like the first time you heard exactly how a baby is made: no more elusive intrigue, no more rumors of storks from the east. Its a simple matter of zygote, chomosome, embryo, mitosis and time, and it sucks the every joy out of life. The elusive killer or the elusive hero, it makes no difference, always seem lose their charms in the end.

And perhaps this is why Moore has not told us who his hero was, because we would all breathe a sigh of discontented relief: we would know, but never discover. To reduce a man to his name, his birthplace, and his experiences is to miss the hero. Yet it is not the name that is the problem: a name is the most powerful kind of word in the universe. It is not the place that is the problem: locations are as foils to the monstrous mouth of eternity, and to swear alegiance is to tie name to place and heart to homeland. Finally, it is not experience that is the problem: experience, though it is, I believe, the most scarred of sacred words, is that story shaping force that moves our lives: it gives specificity to the eternal soul in a third and time-kept way beyond the name and place. No, the problem is our unmagical, surgical minds, that disect to know, and so nether know nor discover, the problem is our unreasoning minds that cannot see their selves for the brain-folds, and the problem is with our hands, which would rather grow more and more slack over time, who would destroy to know, debunk to discover, and tear down tradition and weep for their loss of all dance.

Let us create, let us think, let us love, and let the Hero, the God-Man himself (for that is what a hero truly is) show us that strange way: not all affirmation, not all negation, but that strange and gracious stumbling of a light encircled cross.