The Collector

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Romanul impresioneaza foarte mult cititorul prin antiteza dintre protagonista si erou iar sfarsitul revoltator si crud il va infuria negresit pe acesta. Este incorecta si lipsita de sens atat soarta fluturilor cat si soarta frumoasei Miranda. Consider ca este un pacat capital sa prinzi cele mai frumoase exemplare in vreun insectar obscur, rapindu-le astfel lumii. Inocenta. Singura data cand o poti vedea este in clipa in care o femeie se dezbraca si este incapabila sa te priveasca in ochi." That's essentially the story. Miranda tries to escape, of course, and Ferdinand tries to stop her. She requests items from town, including some things that could perhaps hint that she's that missing girl from the art college. Above all, she tries to find out what Ferdinand wants from her.

Fowles’s psychological study of the two characters is, in fact, a battle of minds and wills. During her time in captivity Miranda didn’t lose her desire to live. She is a survivor. She tries to remain sane by writing about those she loves. An important factor in her survival is the fact that she finds freedom in art. Her moments of solitude are spent in the world of art, a world dominated by the influence of her mentor. Miranda travels down the path of self-spiritual discovery, while she spends her time thinking about life and art. As David Loftus, a Resident John Fowles Scholar puts it, “the narrative encourages us to meditate on the differences between the privileged and elite (not only in terms of class and economics, but native talent and ability) and the masses, and what each may owe or offer to the other.” Cressey, Earl (October 9, 2002). " The Collector: DVD Review". DVD Talk. Archived from the original on July 17, 2019. Fowles explores the psychological ramifications of these control tactics by examining both Clegg and Miranda. At times, control makes Clegg drunk with power, unable to handle his own urges; for instance, he undresses Miranda after chloroforming her the second time and photographs her in his underwear. Later, he will use force to make her pose for him naked. Clegg's control of Miranda is psychologically damaging to her, and every day she tries out a different strategy in an attempt to unseat his control, and also to figure out how best to win his sympathies. His control over her makes her determined to fight for new privileges and emerge as a better person. In the end, of course, Clegg's controlling ways claim her life.ohn Fowles is a very brave man. He has written a novel which depends for its effect on total acceptance by the reader. There is no room in it a b Carruth, Hayden (22 September 1963). "You'll Hang on All Night When You Start 'The Collector' ". Press & Sun-Bulletin. Binghamton, New York. p.28 – via Newspapers.com. Clegg's photo-taking turns aggressive when chloroforms Miranda, takes off her clothes, and photographs her in her underwear. Near the end of the novel, he wants to photograph her naked as insurance in case she tries to tell anyone that he kidnapped her. For Clegg, photographs are a safe way to view Miranda and "collect" her without having to deal with messiness of emotions, or with the dilemma of having an angry prisoner in his basement. To him, photographs are renderings in which none of life's beauty is lost, only its ugly confusion. To Miranda, it is precisely this confusion - anything "nasty," as she says - that makes people alive and that has been the impetus for all great art. Prison I am one in a row of specimens. It’s when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I’m meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it’s the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead.’

While the first part of the book is told from Ferdinand's POV – Fowles is very good at getting inside the twisted mind of what we might call an "incel" today – the second switches to Miranda's POV, and it's here that the book gets really interesting. John Fowles’s (31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) fiction has one theme: the quest of his protagonists for self-knowledge. Such a quest is not easy in the modern world because, as many other modern authors have shown, the contemporary quester is cut off from the traditions and rituals of the past that gave people a purpose and sense of direction. Still, desiring the freedom of individual choice that requires an understanding of self, the Fowlesian protagonist moves through the pattern of the quest as best he can. He’s made me believe them; it’s the thought of him that makes me feel guilty when I break the rules.’ cellar as a luxury prison. To begin with, he did this as a kind of dream gesture imagining Miranda as his permanent guest, imagining her coming to appreciate him, to conquer his loneliness, finally to love him. And then he decided to put Once we recognize the basic ironic-absurdist thrust of the rhetoric of the book, we will see that love is an entirely appropriate theme of the story—because it is so paradoxical... Fowles takes great care to show that Clegg is like no other person we know. It takes Miranda a long time get rid of her successive stereotyped views of Clegg as a rapist, an extortionist, or a psychotic. She admits to an uneasy admiration of him, and this baffles her. Clegg defies stereotypical description." [8]To begin the return journey, he is given a glimpse of Alison, although he has been led to believe that she has committed suicide. Realizing that she is alive and that she offers him “a mirror that did not lie” in her “constant reality,” he understands that the remainder of the quest must be toward a reunion with Alison. Apparently, however, he is not yet worthy of her, being dominated still by the ratiocinative side of himself, that part that seeks to unravel logically the mystery that Conchis presents. On his return to London he is put through additional tests until one day, completely unsuspecting of her arrival, he sees Alison again and follows her to Regents Park, where they are reunited. Realizing that the essential element of the quest is his ability to express his love for Jane, he worries that he will be rejected by her. Jane, less certain of her ability to choose her own future, tries to retreat from his declaration of love, telling him that she sees love as a prison. Jane is not yet ready to accept Daniel, but they journey on together, this time to Palmyra, a once beautiful but now desolate and remote outpost. In this wasteland, they experience the renewal of love. The catalyst comes in the form of a sound, “a whimpering, an unhappiness from the very beginning of existence.” The sound is that of a litter of forlorn puppies, followed by another sound from their bedraggled mother, who tries to protect her puppies by acting as a decoy to distract the couple. The scene propels Jane out of her own wasteland into an enactment of a private ritual. Burying her wedding ring in the sand, she symbolically severs herself from her restrictive past to connect with the present and Daniel.

Crowther, Bosley (June 18, 1965). "Terence Stamp Stars in 'The Collector' ". The New York Times: 28.Miranda keeps a secret diary, and through her accounts of her time in the cellar we see different takes on scenes we've already witnessed. Plus, she's got obsessions of her own, including a much older semi-famous artist. While it's easy to have sympathy for her in the first part – she's clearly a victim – things get more complicated when we read her thoughts about class, education, physical beauty and art in the second.

Reynolds, Margaret, and Jonathan Noakes. John Fowles: The Essential Guide. London: Vintage Books, 2003.Moving in and out of time, the novel skips from Daniel’s boyhood to his present life in Hollywood with Jenny, a young film actor, to his memories of happy days at Oxford, and to his continuing relationship with Jane in the present. It also has several narrative points of view: Daniel tells certain sections, the omniscient author tells others, and still others are told by Jenny. However, The Collector is more than just a thriller. The author’s way of narrating the story gives the reader deep insights into the minds of the two characters. On a psychological level, the book presents Fowles’s mastery in conveying profound meanings to the words he uses. If we analyze the collector’s actions and thoughts, we realize that he has a psychotic mind. Before kidnapping Miranda, while he was thoroughly preparing the details of his future actions, he tries to convince himself that he is not mad, that all his dreams and the imaginary stories he makes up in his mind about Miranda being his wife, are something normal, as long as there is “nothing nasty” in them. Clegg is where this book lives. The peeks inside his mind, while presented as normal thoughts on his part, are truly chilling to us readers who are sane. I shivered to read some of the things he was thinking. These psychological tics and the detached way in which they were presented were what made this book great. (You can see how I'm torn here between being unsatisfied, while at the same time finding some portions of The Collector to be outstanding.) Caught between two women, his wife and Diana, David cannot love either. His situation is in sharp contrast to that of Eliduc, who also encounters two women but can love both. For Eliduc, love is a connecting force; for David, it is a dividing force. When David leaves the Brittany manor, he runs over an object in the road, which turns out to be a weasel. Here the weasel is dead with no hope of being restored to life; in Eliduc, love restores the weasel to life.