Formulate a reading of Clegg and Miranda. Discuss the techniques and reading practices that have encouraged your response to these characters. In your answer, you may discuss various literary techniques, structure, point of view, allusion, Existential and Heraclitian philosophies.
Any characters in any text can be developed to encourage a personal response by a reader. The Collector, by John Fowles, is a novel that uses techniques such as symbolism and conflict to develop this response. Reading practices such as Marxist and Psychoanalytic readings are also used to form a reading of the two characters, that being Frederick Clegg and the other being Miranda Grey. Frederick is a strange 'collector' who no longer collects butterflies, but instead, he collects an art student - Miranda, He becomes fixated on her and keeps her captive in his Sussex house in England. It is also through the structure of the text, the point of view created, and the use of Existential and Heraclitian philosophies that allow readers to formulate a reading of Frederick and Miranda.
English: United Kingdom's Deputy Prime Minster and...
John Fowles
The Collector (1965 film)Frederick Clegg, who prefers to be known as Ferdinand is constructed throughout the novel as someone who is disturbed, socially inept, emotionally deprived and originates from lower class society. Fowles uses a number of techniques and reading practices to allow the reader to either develop a dominant or resistant reading of Clegg. The way Fowles constructs Clegg brings the reader to feel a type of sympathy for him, mainly developed through the content that Clegg's dairy holds. Through this retrospective diary, the readers develop their emotions and become aware of Clegg's past, as well as his thoughts and feelings for the present, and into the near future. His diary format is continuous in structure and clearly develops the theme of the novel. A Marxist critical reading about...