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For Wednesday: Fowles, The Collector, pp.200-253


NOTE: Remember that the post about Flipgrid and art sources is in the post below this one. 

ALSO, this are your very last response questions for the class! On Friday, we'll have an in-class writing over the end of the book, so enjoy answering TWO of the following questions for the last time this semester...

Q1: Toward the end of her life, Miranda records the following in her diary: "uncreative men plus opportunity-to-create equals evil men" (252). What does she mean by this? Does this echo Frederick's earlier statement that "a lot of people...would do what I did or similar things if they had the money and the time" (20)? Is evil simply what happens when morons become artists? :) 

Q2: What does Miranda mean by "He is the New People and I am the Few" (249)? Why might this be a problematic definition of the two of them, and how does she often acknowledge its unsuitability to them both?

Q3: Throughout her diaries, Miranda is constantly trying Frederick in terms of characters from literature: Caliban, The Old Man of the Sea (Tales from the 1,001 Nights: Sinbad the Sailor), Mr. Elton (Emma), Holden Caufield (Catcher in the Rye) and Arthur Seaton (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning--a novel about working-class life in London). Do you think this is more for the reader's benefit, or her own? Why don't any of these characterizations (except perhaps Caliban) ultimately stick? 

Q4: Fowles wrote a book on Thomas Hardy, and many of Hardy's themes seem to dance around the characters and situations of this novel, notably Miranda's comments about God on November 19th. How might the following comments echo some of Hardy's poems: "As if the architects and builders would live in all the houses they built! Or could live in them all. It's obvious...There must be a God and he can't know anything about us" (239). 

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