Alan Moore's from Hell

Alan Moore’s From Hell, tries to reach out and touch us through many ways. He wants us to feel certain emotions and get a glimpse of how London was back in the late 1800’s. Every drawing portraying the scene helps us understand the setting and mood of the story. In certain drawings, they show Williams face straight on and close up depicting that he is very serious, dark sided, and proud of what he’s saying. Also notice how most of the architecture they visit is black and dark in color representing darkness, decay and possible even evil. The darker the color he uses in his drawing the deeper and darker the meaning he is trying to convey. Moore shows us a drawn out map of all the sites they visited because of the irony that it’s in the shape of a pentagram. Pentagrams tend to represent black magic and belief systems the free masons used. William Hull considered himself a free mason as well so this explains why he would choose these sites and his beliefs. The pentagram has a direct relationship between William’s purpose of killing the prostitutes because it is used in black magic and performing symbolic rituals.

Words and people are not the only influences on our beliefs. Moore shows us that people’s beliefs can also be obtained through drawings of architecture. Architecture like obelisks and churches were built to represent what they believed in. For example, Moore uses Hawksmoar’s architectural work throughout the city to represent Free Mason beliefs of male superiority. He pointed out that all obelisks and monuments were created to honor what they believed in. Most obelisks are tall and broad referring to the size and build of man and showing the superiority of males over females. Also most are honoring the sun gods, which is thought of representing man and masculinity. Moore’s main reasoning of mentioning all these buildings and obelisks is to point out that William Hull’s task at hand of killing the whores and keeping women down in power is similar to the reasons why people constructed them and the meanings behind them. Hull fears and