The Collector Case

Through your life you will meet a lot of pressure from society. To be accepted, popular and get the right girl or man you need to fulfil a lot of ideals; be beautiful, be well-educated, be clever, be fit etc. A lot of people cannot handle all these expectations from society and start acting weird to get some kind attention. Somebody keeps it in a "normal level" against others who cannot handle it. Those people might get a depression and somebody does even go mad. Their self-confidence has been broken down and do not believes in themselves anymore. This is exactly what we are seeing in John Fowles novel The Collector.

The narrator of story chances throughout the text. In the beginning it is Fredrick Glegg, who is one of the main characters, who tells the story from his perspective. He tells the story in a first person narrator and we are therefore, only able to see happenings from his perspective and e.g. not able to see what Miranda thinks or feels. "I wanted to look at her face, at her lovely hair, all of her all small and pretty, but I couldn't, she stared so at me" Because the narrator is a first person narra-tor and it is only seen from his perspective it is an unreliable narrator. To see the happenings from another point of view the narrator changes and we are now reading Miranda's diary and there-fore, seeing it from her perspective. The narrator is still a first person narrator and therefore, unreliable. The switch between the two kinds of narrators makes us as a reader able to see both of the two main characters thoughts and viewpoints. At the very end the narrator chance to Fredrick Clegg once again. The story has in other words a changing narrator.

The language does also change throughout the story. When Fredrick Clegg tells the story the lan-guage is normal with long and parataxis sentences. This is also the structure of the beginning of Miranda's diary. Both of their language is very descriptive. In the diary Miranda tries to convince herself not to be afraid of future and the entire kidnapping. Beside this she writes about her fami-ly, school and boyfriend. "I remember (the very first time I met him) G.P saying that collectors were the worst animals of all." The language changes through the diary in line with the sickness of Miranda. It becomes very easy with short sentences which are not even hypostasis but shorter. She does only think of herself, the way Fredrick Clegg treats her and the fact that she is going to die. "He's not human. Oh God I'm so lonely so utterly lonely. I can't write."

At this point Miranda has been broking down, even though it was not Fredrick Clegg's attention. He did not mean to hurt her at all, he did only want to know her and make her fall in love with him. Instead he breaks her down which creates a despair and panic mood in the end. Throughout the entire text Fredrick Clegg is in charge, even though, he