The Collector Speech
*Note* this was a collective (pardon the pun) effort
by myself and Kane, so kudos go out to Kanus for being a great partner and
coming up with some great ideas and insights.
The many different issues of a novel work together as
a whole to engage the reader and produce an understanding of characters and
events. Author of ‘The Collector’ John Fowles uses the issue of self
delusion in his story to engage the reader in Frederick Clegg’s actions.
Self delusion is a trait of Frederick Clegg, he is continually justifying his
actions to himself with twisted logic and no morality and therefore removes or
at least hides the guilt from his conscious mind.
Fred came from a seriously broken home and ‘they’ always say that’s
where the problem begins. It all began with his father dying when he was two
and his mother leaving him to run off with another man. From then on he was
left to his Aunt Annie and Uncle Dick, who had a disabled daughter Mabel. When
Fred was fifteen his Uncle also died. It seems his Uncle was his only guard
from the outside world as he stood up for Fred and at least acted proud of
Fred’s collecting as a hobby. His uncle’s death caused a great change in
his life, he was now alone in every sense of the word.
He no longer had anyone to share his collection with and now he had to live
with the guilt trips his aunt sent him on whenever he was seen to be having
fun around Mabel. This bred a sterility in him. He no longer wanted to have
friends, believing he didn’t need them. This may have in fact been a self
delusion, nothing but a way to shield himself from being hurt again. This
reflex may have been a result of the way he was hurt by his parents and his
Uncle and Auntie; he has been hurt by loss before now and so he creates a
world around him where he cannot be hurt this way again. It could be said that
this is also the cause of the events to come. He has chosen Miranda as an
outlet for all the pent up affection and now has to keep control of Miranda in
order to prevent the loss of yet another person he has ‘loved’.
Throughout the story Fred’s self delusion morphs from just opinions about
society to something more serious; something that seems to distort reality as
it enters his mind. For example at the beginning of the story he comments on
how the world would be a better place if there were more people like him in
it. A mild delusion, more a result of an inflated ego than any kind of mental
illusion. However, by the end of the book he is uttering claims that show the
full extent of his self-delusion. In one instance he says “Anyone with the
money and the time, and therefore power, would do the same.” An obvious
reflection of how well he has convinced himself to believe that what he is
doing is what anyone would do in the same situation.
This gradual self illusion shows us one thing about his character; he is
incredibly weak of will. At any point in the proceedings, Fred could have
stopped. If he had been stronger he could have set Miranda free; she didn’t
know his name and he had enough cash to skip the country and start a new life
elsewhere. But his subconscious seems to rule over his life, and he caves into
his hidden desires - cultivated by his aforementioned upbringing – without a
fight. Of course, we may conclude that this and other examples of his dull
personality and emotional queasiness indicate a wider reading. It seems to
become evident in the book that although Frederick Clegg is strong in the
physical world - he has money to control his immediate material surroundings
and he has strength enough to overcome Miranda – he seems weak and immature
emotionally and mentally
There is a feature of Fred’s character that seems
prominent if we analyse his actions and reactions when he wins the soccer pools.
He does not seem to be affected by his fortunate luck, he merely accepts it as a
fact and moves on with his life - albeit with the advantage of seemingly
unlimited funds.
He does not go out and buy himself a sports car, he
does not go on a holiday, he does not buy himself new clothes or an expensive
watch. This is because he does not have any ambitions, nor does he have any
dreams or aspirations. He seems dead inside, like a husk of a man just going
through the motions of living; never enjoying life, just participating in it
because he has to. He moves to London because that’s what people with money
do, he gives money to Aunt Annie because he’s expected to, he loves Miranda
because that’s what people do, right? But he does not do these things because
he genuinely wants to, he does them because that is what is expected of him in
the society that he lives. And so when he tries to interact with the society
around him, i.e. by trying to win Miranda, he does it without the benefit of
social sanity.
Now, as Kane mentioned, Fred constantly reassures himself throughout the story
by twisting the reality around him. But it is the nature of this twisting, or
self-delusion, that tells us the most about his character. Fred doesn’t delude
himself the way that most normal people do, by pretending that something isn’t
there when it is; I mean who hasn’t tried to convince themselves that that
annoying buzzing sound made by a mosquito or a fly or a Year 8 isn’t there.
No, Fred’s delusion is a much more serious one; he convinces himself that
something, in this case Miranda’s affection, is there when it so
obviously is not. In the same way that a lovesick teenager might delude himself
that that hot chick in year 12 has something going for him, Fred convinces
himself that Miranda holds some form of affection for him.
But his delusion is much more dangerous than any crush a teenager might have.
You see, the teenager has rationality; he knows that it’s probably never going
to happen between him and his dream girl. But Fred Clegg is different. He has an
element of social immaturity in him; he does not understand that the actions he
commits could mean anything else other than exactly how he intends them to mean.
And this is where his self-delusion really comes into play. In some hidden
corner of his mind, or soul for that matter, he realises that what he is doing
is wrong. However, Fred Clegg rationalises every one of his actions to make them
seem fair and reasonable, and to him they have fair and reasonable meanings
behind them. Thus even the inexcusable act of kidnapping Miranda has a
justifiable meaning; he -just- wants to show her how much he cares for her.
In his mind, none of what happened was malicious or wrong in a social sense; he
even proclaims ‘I thought I was acting for the best and within my rights.’
He has justified what he did in his mind to the point where he views his own
actions as being for her benefit! Truly this is the most pointed example of
self-delusion that can be dredged up from anyone’s consciousness.
Of course, the severity of self-delusion as is present in Fred Clegg has
important and noticeable ramifications on his character. Firstly, this means
that he has never truly faced failure in his life; as in any situation in which
he has done wrong he has convinced himself, through various impossible
justifications, that he has done nothing untoward or unacceptable.
This afflicts his character with a kind of emotional
impenetrability. No matter how Miranda tries to show him that she doesn’t love
him, and can never love him, he just thinks that she needs to get to know him
more, needs to see that what he’s doing is all for her.
This wall between him and the society in which he
lives has grown stronger every time he has deluded himself into blamelessness.
Thus he never learns from experience and is socially
immature. He blushes constantly when things such as sex come up in conversation
and when he has his sexual experience with Miranda he just can’t handle one of
the facts of life that sex -can- be, to quote Miranda, “...just an activity,
like anything else. It’s not dirty, it’s just two people playing with each
other’s bodies. Like dancing. Like a game.”
Further evidence of his immaturity comes from his
actions of heaping gifts upon Miranda, an obvious attempt to gain her affections
by satisfying her materialistic wants. But Miranda remains unswayed, as she is
more a spiritual and emotional person and is not reliant on material objects to
derive happiness from the world.
The question of whether or not Frederick Clegg is
insane is one that should not be hastily stamped ‘yes’ and filed away in a
cabinet marked ‘Facts of Life’. Everyone interprets situations a little
differently to anyone else; that’s why history can be such a confusing topic.
But when interpretation and reality are so far apart as to be contradictory,
problems start to occur.
This is no excuse for the death of another human
being however, and to this extent Frederick Clegg should be held responsible.
But should we not be also pointing a finger at the society responsible for some
of the self delusions that Clegg believed to be the holy truth? We believe so.
Thankyou for listening to our speech and we hope you enjoyed it.