What is it behind the mask ?

"Did you think to kill me?  There’s no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill.  There’s only an idea.  Ideas are bullet-proof" (Moore 236).

Intriguing and exciting are the two words that come to my mind when is it about defining V. 

 

V finds inspiration in Guy Fawkes, from whom he adopts his face with a mask and that is precisely what caught my attention, the fact that we are not able to see V's face, which at the same time allows him to adopt the face of an ideal.

He forgets about his name. He becomes an idea that near the end Evey understand and after imagining the face behind the mask, she realizes that knowing the face makes the idea human, and humans are fragile, are mortal. It would give it a gender, a personality; it would make we fit that person into the concept of his humanity.

"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)

The mask protects him from everyone else. We don't know who V is but due to his actions and his mask we relate him to an idea: revolution. 

 

Based on this, I believe Moore gave us this story with a female follower of V, to give power to the idea of representing an idea more than becoming someone. Highlighting the fact that anybody can be V if they have already free their minds towards revolution.

Another interpretation that we can see in the novel is Larkhill. This is the place where the man in room number five (5=V) becomes V. In the Shadow Gallery, V recreates Larkhill. He does it to revenge Prothero, but curiously since it is a representation of his past and experience, V uses his own Larkhill to free Evey from her fears and past, to show her the world through his eyes, to free her mind so that she could see what is really right and not what she has been told by an repressive government.

All in all, if we think about it, in literature, everything is a representation of something else and nothing is what seems to be.

Kohns, Oliver. Guy Fawkes in the 21st Century. A Contribution to the Political Iconography  of Revolt. Image [&] Narrative. 2013. PDF 
 
Moore, Alan. V for Vendetta. DC Comics. 1988. PDF