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<title> Nothing is perfect </title>
Reading texts is and has always been an individual matter. How you read a text is depending on different circumstances such as age, experience, background etc. Every interpretation is individual and hardly wrong. In this assignment I will give my own view on John Fowles novel The Collector, or more specifically my view of the theme in it, and even more specifically my view of the theme in Miranda's diary dated November 7th.

The first theme I would like to discuss is the contrasting relationship between life and death. I will begin with the first part which is the living dead, represented in the novel by the new people. The stand as symbols of life denial. With their increasing wealth they have lost their souls, or as it is said: "Affluence, affluence and not a soul to see". I think that Fowles wants to show us how money often affects people in negative ways. When people get rich they tend to forget about the real values in life. Instead of finding happiness in small things they create higher and higher goals in material standards. A nice car, a big TV and so on are signs of success and happiness, although their inner life gets poorer. They mass-produce everything without a single feeling of life in it. The new people see themselves as the city upon the hill. They want everybody to be like them, because if so the world will be better. Thus they have to behave correctly. This is also life-oppressing, or as Miranda tells it: "...suffocating atmosphere of the done thing and the right people and the nice behaviour". Of course, people not being like them reminds them of their inner poverty. One of those representing the new people is Caliban. He oppresses life, he wears down everything named life. He is a collector of butterflies, and now he has collected Miranda. Both the butterflies and Miranda are beautiful, they were both full of life before he collected them. But he has killed the butterflies and arranged their beauty into his collection, and now he is killing what's left of life in Miranda as to keep her beautifulness, his ideal picture of beauty, life-long. This is for me also an evidence that the new people prefers dead thing rather than inner assets.

The other part is living, or life, and it's represented by Miranda. But what does Fowles mean with life? Well, he lets Miranda tell us: "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". I think that Fowles mean that life is unique, that every person is different. Nothing in the world is perfect, everything has its deflects. We find G.P.'s drawing that is "the only living, unique, created thing here". In the drawing he has made a fudge of one of the feet, and the drawing is also unbalanced. But this gives the drawing a life - it is man-made. We also meet the story of The Catcher in the Rye in which a character is (like this essay) a mess, but he's a human being for all his faults. And last we have G.P. and others who are human because of their faults. They have weak moments, but they don't try to hide them, in opposition to the new people who are always trying to be correct. As I mentioned I think Fowles is trying to tell us that no one alive is perfect, and that the non-perfection is what makes persons alive. And man can always improve, if one doesn't think he's perfect. Caliban and the new people have opted to leave life because it didn't suit them. Caliban also thought that Miranda was perfect, but she didn't fulfill what he'd expected of her. I don't think it's a coincidence that Miranda is an artist. In my opinion artists are the ones catching the reality of the times they live in, in their drawings, i.e. Miranda is giving the true vision of life.

In one of my weak moments the idea of this following came up. The idea was that Fowles in this novel also could be dealing with the situation for women in England. If I don't remember it wrongly the situation for women has not always been nice. Women have stayed at home while the men have worked and visited the pub. In this novel an independant woman is collected. Caliban is trying to oppress the life-part of the woman, he just wants her beautiful. He tries to make her obedient, "he wants her dead". A sentence that could undeline the theme is: "Imprisoned, unable to grow". It suits fine for getting married, giving birth, and being stuck at home. Maybe this is a long-shot, but it sounds real to me.

But now it's time for me to summon up the conclusions this essay has led to. I will make it a short one. The new peoples manner works as an oppressor. They spit on those who are different than them and everything is mass-produced. No one is perfect, we all have our faults and that makes us interesting and improvable. The fact that Miranda is an artist is of course that artists give the right view on life. Probably this is just a few of dozens of themes in the book but I will finish here before the essay becomes too long.
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