Assignment: Write a 700-800-word essay on one of the following topics, each of which asks you to analyze some aspect of John Fowles’s novel The Collector. Be sure to supply evidence from the text to back up the claim you make about the text in your essay, and draw some broader analytical conclusion about Fowles’s text. Note that the word limits are firm ones.
§ At the end of the novel, when Clegg returns to the cottage to make his final preparations, he says that “I thought I had better think it over first and then in any case I found the diary” (304), referring, of course, to the portion of the text narrated by Miranda in her diary (123-279). Clegg’s reading of Miranda’s diary seems to prompt a change of mind; what does Clegg learn about his relationship to Miranda through the diary that he does not fully understand before reading it, how do his plans change as a result of it, and how does the reading of the diary prompt this change? Write a 700-800 word essay in which you analyze Fowles’s representation of the character of Clegg and in particular how and why he changes in the course of the novel, through a consideration of this final transformative moment in the narrative.
§ Miranda suggests in her diary that she “can draw his face and his expressions, but words are all so used, they’ve been used about so many other things and people. . . . Words are so crude, so terribly primitive compared to drawing, painting, sculpture” (158). At the same time, though, she is able to write while being held captive—she says that she “wrote and wrote and wrote myself into the other world” in order “[t]o escape in spirit, if not in fact” (166)—but finds her attempts to draw “[h]opeless” (192) and works on “sketches for a painting I shall do when I’m free” (166, my emphasis). Write a 700-800 word essay in which you analyze Fowles’s representation of the relationship between writing and visual art through an examination of Miranda’s predicament, her reaction to the two forms of expression, and the way that Fowles represents them in the novel. Why can Miranda write but not produce visual art while in captivity, and what does Fowles seem to be suggesting here about visual art, writing, aesthetic beauty, etc., and the human relationship to these things?
§ The novel consists of two first-person narratives told from two quite different points of view: Clegg’s rather strained and inarticulate record of his story for an unknown audience, and Miranda’s diary, with its many reflections on her captivity, Clegg, her family, art, and so on. Write a 700-800 word essay in which you consider the perspectives of these two narrators and their respective reliability in presenting their points of view on the world. Why does Fowles offer us these events in this way rather than more conventionally as a narrative consistently told from the same point of view? How reliable are these two narrative voices, and what are we to make of their various revelations, concealments, distortions, and so on, and of the novel more generally, in light of the way Fowles presents it?
Format
– Follow the format guidelines in the Department of English Style Sheet, available here.
Grading Emphases:
-understanding of genre (analysis, argument)
-clear assertion of conflict in opening move
-analysis/interpretation/resolution which draws an analytical conclusion about Joyce’s text as a whole
-use of textual evidence
-proper citation and integration of quotations
-understanding of academic audience
-avoiding verb tense shifts and agreement errors.
Comma splices, misused semicolons, sentence fragments, run-on sentences and apostrophe errors penalized at –1 each. Proofread your work carefully prior to submission.
Note:
For this assignment, you MUST submit a Works Cited list, and you MUST cite your quoted evidence from the text completely, accurately, and according to MLA format.