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<title> MIRANDA, A BUTTERFLY </title>
The Collector by John Fowles, is a riveting story told from the dual perspectives of captor and captive. Frederick Clegg, a newly-rich clerk whose hobby is to collect butterflies kidnaps Miranda Grey, a twenty-year-old art student and he keeps her prisoner in the cellar of his house. This captivating story gives the reader an insight into the minds of the two characters. Frederick is a drab and meticulous person who suffers from feelings of inferiority and he tries to make Miranda understand him. Miranda on the other hand, has a love for life and is a very impetuous yet thoughtful girl who is full of hope. The themes of life against death and Miranda's personal development are in my opinion the main themes of The Collector. This is what I want to illustrate in my essay. 

In Miranda's diary entry on November 7, she talks about her unbearable situation. "How the days drag. Today. Intolerably long. My one consolation is G.P.'s drawing. It grows on me. On one. It's the only living, unique, created thing here." Miranda sees her painter friend G.P. and herself as representatives of life and art. Frederick in her opinion is just a collector who is not interested in her as a person only her looks. She is only another specimen to add to his collection. On October 24, she writes, "It's me he wants, my look, my outside; not my emotions or my mind or my soul or even my body. Not anything human. He's a collector. That's the great dead thing in him."

Clegg her kidnapper is such a dull colourless person who is suffering from a huge inferiority complex. The way he speaks is like Miranda puts it "Cliché after cliché after cliché, and all so old-fashioned,". He is always striving to be proper and he has a personality that is as dead as his butterflies. Miranda cannot stand people like Frederick, she thinks of him as being stupid, petty, selfish and mean. She thinks of herself and G.P. as belonging to 'the Few', the doctors, the teachers and the artists. They have the carry the weight of people like Clegg, and 'the Few' is the hope for the world, she writes, "what hope there is, is with them - with us. Because I'm one of them."

'The Few' represents education, hope and creativity all of which Miranda's kidnapper lacks and she refers to him as Caliban, a sort of monster. "I love honesty and freedom and giving. I love making, I love doing, I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart." This is Miranda in a nutshell, full of energy and a zest for life. Frederick has robbed her of her freedom and he keeps her isolated from the rest of the world.

She is constantly thinking of ways how to escape. There is the episode when Clegg was nearly fooled by her act when she was pretending to have appendicitis. This episode and her temperamental behaviour makes him suspicious of her, which proves to be to her disadvantage when she eventually becomes very ill. Frederick, her kidnapper is always justifying his actions to himself saying that "I thought I was acting for the best and within my rights." (p.125). His dream is that Miranda would gradually come to like him and eventually marry him and have a family. He also refers to Miranda as his guest, thus justifying to himself that she is not his prisoner.

Miranda's situation makes her realise that is thanks to Clegg that she develops, and in her diary entry on December 5, she talks about her personal growth. "I would not want this not to have happened. Because if I escape I shall be a completely different and I think better person. Because if I don't escape, if something dreadful happened, I shall still know that the person I was and would have stayed if this hadn't happened was not the person I now want to be." Miranda learns through her suffering and she discovers herself and society. I see Miranda as a butterfly that goes from the pupa stage and then develops into a beautiful butterfly, and then just like a butterfly she dies.

Frederick, Miranda's abductor spots another victim, a girl whom he looks upon as "Someone ordinary I could teach." (p.287). She looks a bit like Miranda, but she is not as pretty as her. He thinks he was aiming too high with Miranda, and he does not want to make the same mistake again, next time. 

Frederick and Miranda are two worlds apart. His dreary personality reeks of nothingness, he is like an unwanted weed in the garden. Miranda is so unlike him full of vitality and she stands out as a vibrant colour on the palette, and she never seems to lose hope. Her captivity makes her develop and mature, while Clegg her kidnapper stays the same without any personal growth. The Collector is in my opinion an extraordinary psychological thriller that I can read again and again.
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