To turn the habit inside out, to approach any issue from the depths of consciousness - this is how postmodernism works, the model representative of which is John Fowles. "Collector" (a brief summary of which is not able to convey the entire depth of the work) is an anti-novel that has gone down in history.
Compressed excursion into love madness
Winning the lottery breaks life, and not one. The clerk of the city hall Fredrick Clegg quietly collects butterflies, but one of them remains inaccessible - Miranda Gray, an attractive and educated student. Obsessed with it, the hero is going to replenish the collection, dreams that love will be established between them. Although there could have been a place for romantic history, the reality is completely 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 with the help of the nature of subjective reality.
Two sides of the coin: love and hate
John Fowles is a collector of duality. In his novel, he pushed two worlds, two perceptions, and at the same time made the heroes hostages of reality. Miranda is abducted and distant from the world, and Clegg has long lived in his own space of illusions. Using this duality, Fowles manipulates the opinion of the reader, offering two views on one situation. The narrative technique leads to a clash of points of view not only regarding motives and goals, perceived as determining factors in the plot, but also in appealing to the moral principles of the reader.
"Social Contradictions and Moral Confrontation" - such a theme for the first novel was chosen by John Fowles. "Collector" opens the beginning of the experiment with the presentation of material. To show the different norms that the characters are accustomed to, the author created an individual style of narration for each of them. Miranda speaks to the reader with the βvoiceβ of her diary, full of artistic images and intellectual utterances. Clegg approaches the capture of Miranda, as if to solve a mathematical problem. He finds nothing wrong with his actions and justifies himself. The reader is easily involved in the game of the author and empathizes with the kidnapper along with his victim, which solves the emotional dilemma of imprisonment.
At the same time, the author acts as a psychiatrist who observes the behavior of his own creations. Somewhere at the bottom of the basement, Clegg is trying to create Eden, distant from worldly fuss. He reaches for Miranda, like an anime, since he was deprived of love from early childhood. The hero is looking for the care that he did not receive from his mother. He lacks a strong self-awareness that would help to determine the roles of people he met in his life's journey. Clegg never felt loved. All important relationships in his fate ended in tragedy, because he was simply unable to love the girl and explain to her about it.
The fragile butterfly tale is the basis of the imagery of the novel
The opportunity to listen to the two sides of the same story and draw a conclusion based on the experience that was lived with the characters is the goal that John Fowles set. "Collector" is a unique example of postmodern literature, which uses various techniques to influence the reader's psyche using images. Is it worth choosing one of the parties?
One of the most powerful interpretations of the phrase "butterfly in the stomach", which is now actively used by young people, gave the world John Fowles. The Collector, whose reviews relate to violence, opens this topic with images. Butterflies became a symbol of unrequited love, experienced as a disease. Through collecting insects, the protagonist shows sadistic inclinations - forever depriving them of wings. Miranda, captured by Clegg, remains free in her dreams, where she can fly.
Butterflies act as a separator of class differences, as shown in the episode exploring the collection. Although Fred Clegg is endowed with a multidimensional character, Miranda against his background seems more than a man - a treasure that he has been looking for all his life. And although the hero did everything possible, in his opinion, to create an idyll, he did not manage to save the girl from the common cold and death. Clegg, as a true collector, pursues another woman, which ends the novel, permeated with hundreds of feelings.