Analysis of Clegg’s Alienation on the Collector

The Collector, John Fowles’s first novel released in 1963, is a novel written in the form of the hero’s diary. The hero Clegg, an orphan who is distorted in the cold social environment, being an isolated and invisible man in the world, diverted his interests from the collector of the butterflies to the capture of a living girl and prisoned her till she was dead. From the analysis of the novel, this paper concerns the inner motivation of Clegg, the vulgar of Midland, the captured girl, and the lust of the hypocoristic Mr. X, with the process of the tracking down and imprisonment till the death of the heroine. This paper points out the root of the alienated phenomenon from the character’s speech, behaviors, and inner activities. In the modern world, a human being becomes the victim of the frosted world. Everyone is doomed to be distorted, crazy, and totally destroyed.