John Fowles is a collector of reader interpretations

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Turn inside out the familiar, approach any issue from the depths of consciousness - this is how postmodernism works, the exemplary representative of which is John Fowles. "The Collector" (a summary of which is not able to convey the full depth of the work) is an anti-novel that has gone down in history.

A concise excursion into love madness

Winning the lottery breaks lives, and more than one. City Hall Clerk Fredrick Clegg quietly collects butterflies, but one of them remains inaccessible - Miranda Grey, an attractive and educated student. Obsessed with her, the hero is going to replenish the collection, dreams that love will begin between them. While this could be the setting for a romantic story, the reality turns out to be quite different.

A novel about unrequited love, insanity, kidnapping - all this was collected in one work by John Fowles. "The Collector" is saturated with postmodernism. And only he is able to show objective reality through the nature of subjective reality.

Two sides of a coin: love and hate

John Fowles is a duality collector. In his novel, he collided two worlds,two perceptions, and at the same time made the heroes hostages of reality. Miranda is kidnapped and removed from the world, and Clegg has long been living in his own space of illusions. Using this duality, Fowles manipulates the reader's mind by offering two views of the same situation. Narrative technique leads to a clash of points of view, not only in relation to motives and goals, perceived as the determining factors of the plot, but also in the appeal to the moral principles of the reader.

"Social contradictions and moral confrontation" - such a theme for the first novel, John Fowles. "Collector" opens the beginning of the experiment with the supply of material. To show the different norms that the characters are used to, the author created an individual style of narration for each of them. Miranda speaks to the reader with the "voice" of her diary, full of artistic images and intellectual statements. Clegg approaches capturing Miranda as if he were solving a math problem. He finds nothing wrong with his actions and justifies himself. The reader is easily drawn into the author's game and empathizes with the kidnapper on a par with his victim, solving the emotional dilemma of imprisonment.

At the same time, the author acts as a psychiatrist, observing the behavior of his own creations. Somewhere at the bottom of the basement, Clegg is trying to create an Eden, remote from the bustle of the world. He is drawn to Miranda like an anime, having been deprived of love since early childhood. The hero is looking for the care that he did not receive from his mother. He doesn'tlacks a strong self-awareness that would help determine the roles of people met on the path of life. Clegg never felt loved. All important relationships in his life ended in tragedy, because he is simply unable to love a girl and explain this to her.

The Tale of the Fragile Butterfly is the basis of the imagery of the novel

Being able to listen to two sides of the same story and draw conclusions based on the experience that was lived with the characters is the goal set by John Fowles. "The Collector" is a unique example of postmodern literature that uses various techniques to influence the reader's psyche through images. Is it worth choosing one of the sides?

One of the most powerful interpretations of the phrase "butterflies in the stomach", which is now actively used by young people, was given to the world by John Fowles. "The Collector", reviews of which relate to violence, opens this topic with the help of images. Butterflies have become a symbol of unrequited love, experienced like a disease. Through collecting insects, the protagonist shows sadistic inclinations - forever deprives them of wings. Miranda, being captured by Clegg, remains free in her dreams where she can fly.

Butterflies act as a class divider, as shown in the introduction to the collection episode. Although Fred Clegg is endowed with a multi-dimensional character, Miranda seems to be more than human in his background - a treasure that he has been searching for all his life. And although the hero did everything possible, in his opinion, to createidyll, but failed to save the girl from colds and death. Clegg, like a real collector, pursues another woman, which concludes a novel riddled with hundreds of feelings.